There is a show out there that takes place on a series of enormous stages under the glare of blindingly bright lights. These stages are filled with performers, illusionists, buffoons, tricksters, tramps, whores, and a varied assortment of other motley characters. Almost all of them wear makeup of some kind to further the act and to add to the glamour of their illustrious craft. They display dazzling images that instill a sense of danger and disbelief to anyone who watches. They produce a seemingly endless stream of marionettes that dance and jerk about wildly, their strings manipulated by unseen hands. They contrive spectacles that amaze and astound those with simple minds, while generating controversy for those who have the ability to think for themselves.
And through it all, these harlequins, performers and illusionists smile broadly with their arms outstretched to the audience and say, “Trust us! Believe in us! We do all of this for you!”
Now you might think that perhaps this show is some kind of Marti Gras, but it takes place far more often than that. It is in fact a circus…a Media Circus, to be exact.
The term “media circus” has been used to describe the frenzy that occurs when a large group of journalists and news crews come together to cover a certain story or event. What I put forth is that the media is a circus. The news you see is always a media circus…the worst show on earth.
Before I begin, I have two disclaimers. One, like everything else in the world there are exceptions to the rule. What I am about to say applies to a large number of media personnel and journalists, but not to every single one. I know this. There are some good apples here and there, but it only takes one apple to spoil a bunch. –And the media is full of bad apples. The second disclaimer is that I love the real three-ringed circus and I have nothing but respect for the performers and acrobats who perform daring feats that few others can do. I would rather watch a daring young man on a flying trapeze than watch twenty-two football players on a tuft of grass any day.
I also want to clarify what I mean when I say “the media”. Media usually refers to everything from TV to radio to movies to books. What I am talking about here is the news media. Time Magazine, The Washington Post, MSNBC, Newsweek, The New York Times…these are examples of what constitutes the media I’m talking about. It’s true that there are many novels, books and TV shows that make political statements and assumptions about the way things are in America and around the world, but it is the news media that claims to be the caretaker of truth. When you turn on the evening news or pick up a newspaper you are supposed to be getting facts and information, but that’s not what you get.
We’ve been told time and time again that we need to be informed. We’ve been told that we need to be up-to-date on the current events in the world and know what’s happening in our country and in our communities. We need to be on the cutting edge, riding in the fast lane on the information highway. We need to form opinions about everything from politics to civil rights issues. We need to be involved and knowledgeable so that we can function well in society and generate conversation.
Where do we hear this from? The media. How can we possibly achieve all the goals mentioned above? The media. Convenient, isn’t it?
The bottom line is that almost all news is nothing but entertainment. The media tries to make it seem like you have to be in the know, that you have to tune in and find out what’s going on. Sometimes they make it seem like you’re missing out if you don’t watch and read what they say, while at other times they’ll flat out call you an irresponsible citizen for ignoring them; you’re taking your rights for granted, failing to exercise all the freedoms you are entitled to in this great yet somehow horrible nation you live in.
But ask yourself, how did your life change when you heard about Hurricane Katrina? How does knowing the American troop death toll make a difference in your day-to-day life? Does knowing that the CIA is “torturing” terrorists on some island do anything to alter your routine? Unless you are directly involved, those events mean absolutely nothing to you—and the catch is, if you are involved, you already know those things.
For example, I work in an industry that uses a lot of PVC (Poly Vinyl Chloride). As it happens, many of America’s PVC factories were in New Orleans and were consequently wiped out during the hurricane. The media didn’t say one thing about PVC. It exaggerated the death toll on a daily basis and it made everyone down there seem like crazed wild beasts but it didn’t tell me that PVC was going to jump up in price because production was going to go down. –I found that little fact out from my boss because information like that directly concerned him.
If one of your friends or family members lost their life in Iraq, you didn’t need the news media to tell you that—you found out from another source. If you had business or personal interests in New Orleans, you most likely would have found out without any kind of press. And if you had no business or relations down there, why the heck should you care?
My point is that news is no more important than a sitcom. I don’t need to know about Cindy Sheehan’s arrest for yet another protest any more than I need to know if Ross and Rachel are still on a break. Most news is useless, pointless information that is spun by the media to sound important in order to justify it’s own existence.
I know this is a crazy concept, but think about it. What did you change about your life when you heard about the tsunami? What about when you heard about the Duke rape case? Did knowing there were snipers in Virginia help you avoid them, or did it simply lock you down in fear? What news actually helps you or has any impact on your life?
The weather forecast is wrong more often than it’s right, and telling me I’ve got a 65% chance of rain doesn’t really do squat. It’s either going to rain or it isn’t and the weather folks can’t seem to get it right even a day in advance. I would venture to say that traffic reports important and pertinent to my life and plans, as is the local news about school closings, grand openings, job opportunities, sales, and the like.
Not too long ago an article in the local paper here in Fredericksburg caught my eye. It was a small piece on the up-and-coming flag football league here in town. It gave a brief history of how it started a couple years back and talked about how it has grown. It told me where the games took place, who could play and how to register. That was useful news and information. If I had so desired, I could have changed my daily routine and added an activity to my life that I might not otherwise had known existed without the newspaper.
…But that’s the only thing I can think of. Most everything else is trash. Whether or not Bush lied about Iraq is completely irrelevant to my life. What could I do to change anything? The guy isn’t even going to be running in the next election, and I’m not going to call for his impeachment when I know only a small portion of the facts.
To epitomize this point, I’d say that the media should have kept its mouth shut about Watergate. *GasP!* Can I be serious? Watergate? The big news story that represents all that’s right and good in the media? The event that infused the media with its current hubris and lust for blood?
I wasn’t alive during Watergate, but I challenge anyone to say how they or the nation as a whole benefited from knowing about Watergate. Now, I’m not saying that it shouldn’t have been investigated and prosecuted. I’m not saying it wasn’t a big deal and that it wasn’t a sign of some serious corruption. But what did you or your parents do with that information? How was your life improved by knowing about that scandal? Did people suddenly feel a wave of euphoria wash over them as the media inundated them with the latest breaking news? Were the old made young and the dead brought to life because some idiot with a microphone talked about what some guys did at a hotel, and how a guy tried to destroy some tapes?
Yes, “a guy” was the president of the United States—so what? The media calls itself the whistle blower…what the heck good does that do? Are they actually saying that without reporters Nixon would have gotten away with Watergate? Are they saying that the media caught the burglars and made the arrest? Are they claiming that they brought the Senate Watergate Committee together and investigated the facts?
The people that needed to know—the people who investigated and conducted the trials—didn’t get their information from the media. They didn’t run to Walter and say, “Hey, what the heck is going on, ‘cause we have no frigg’in clue?” The only people who learned anything from the media were the people who really had no business knowing and who couldn’t do a thing about it one way or another.
Watergate was only a big deal for the people involved. The consequences didn’t reach to you or your families. It’s just like anything in life. You breaking your leg is news to your family and friends, and it’s a big stink to you, but no one else really cares. Watergate and stories like it are important to the people whose lives are impacted by them—no one else really should care.
And don’t try to give me this bologna about how it changed our outlook on our country and our leaders. Anyone who thinks our presidents’ poop doesn’t stink, or that our nation is the exception to historical follies and human nature is a naïve fool. Watergate as a news story didn’t do a single thing for this country or its citizens. When the whole thing was over, it should have gotten a small blurb in the newspaper saying that Nixon left office because of a scandal that took place and listed some of the details.
“Nixon screwed up. He’s out and someone else is in”. That’s the only bit of copy about Watergate that’s worth anything.
So the first strike against the media is it is worthless. It’s cheap entertainment. Ooo! Look at the murder that happened 2,000 miles away! Ooo! Look at the water that’s covering some strangers’ yard! Ooo! Look at the bad corporate guys going to jail because they cheated on their taxes! Why the heck should we care? We’re not going to help, all we’re going to do is say, “Whew, I’m glad it’s not me!” and move on. Either that or we’ll stand around the proverbial water-cooler saying, “Did you see what happened down in Texas? Crazy isn’t it? Can you believe that guy got away with it?” Idle chatter. That’s the reward news offers us.
Besides the stuff we don’t need to know about, what about the stuff we shouldn’t know about? The media puts out this lie that we have a right to know. Do we? Do we have a right to know how exactly we’ve stopped terrorist attacks? What happens when our enemies find out?
Just because there are spineless wretches who betray this country and leak secrets about its security and operations to the press doesn’t mean the press has to write about it. Reporters aren’t forced at gunpoint to spray leaks all over the front page of a newspaper. There are reasons for secrets—some good, some bad. Who the heck gave the media the right to determine which is which? How many people have lost their lives because the operation or mission they were on got it’s cover blown when the story broke? How many lives have been ruined because the media decided to make a secret public?
How would you like your life investigated and reported on to the rest of the world? You think it’s great when these politicians, government officials and celebrities get exposed and humiliated, but what if the great media decides you’re of interest? The only reason the world doesn’t know everything about you is because the media doesn’t think enough people would buy their papers or watch their programs just to find out about you. These guys don’t care about your protection or m rights. They say they do. They say they’re helping to keep you safe. But as soon as they can make money off of you, they’ll tear you to pieces in the name of good journalism. And what happens when half the stuff they write about you is out of context or completely fabricated? How are you going to get the truth out? Who is going to believe you?
How can you trust these leeches who obviously have no discretion and lack the ability to keep their mouths shut about anything? Even comments made off the record have mysteriously turned up. Sure it’s illegal, but the damage is done.
Some worthless reporter recorded a coach telling a questionable joke. The joke was bad and it was off the record, but this reporter decided to leak it anyway. He gave it to a radio station that then played the tape. Who here has never told a bad joke? Anyone ever told a Pollock joke? A Jewish joke? I know I have. That’s racism according to these idiots, and they make a big deal out of it. It’s one thing if the guy came out at a press conference and thought the joke was something to be shared with the public. That’s poor judgement. But this coach had no idea he was being recorded, never mind that it would get played on the radio.
And what happened to this bold reporter who exposed a coach saying something that none of us would ever, ever say? Nothing. He got a slap on the wrist. What about the coach? What about his reputation? Nothing can be done about that now. The toothpaste is out of the tube, as the saying goes.
But I digress.
Watching the news is just like watching a reality show. It’s not really reality. It’s a collection of manipulated and faulty data constructed by an agenda and given artificial credibility so it can entertain. Reality shows are so pathetic in terms of plot and interest that if they were marketed as scripted shows they would have tanked a long time ago.
The Blair Witch Project was a low-budget film that made a ton of money when it first came out. It wasn’t because the footage was great—in fact a lot of it was horrible. It wasn’t because the characters were well developed and shared riveting dialogue. It wasn’t because the direction was so amazing or the cinematography was breathtaking. The movie was a success because people believed it was actual footage from a real disaster. They thought the tape was found in an abandoned camera out in the woods, and the footage actually showed what were most likely these kids’ final hours on earth. Once people found out that it was all bogus, the movie quickly lost people’s interest and the sequel wasn’t even good enough to flop.
So too is it with the news. It has to come across as real and accurate so that people will be interested, yet it has to be entertaining. And it is this last requisite that creates a problem that is impossible for the media to solve: credibility.
The media has to sell news. Unless there are stories that can grab a reader’s attention, the paper doesn’t sell. And what grabs people’s attention? Controversy, disaster, misfortune, violence, strife, death, and gossip. So how can we believe anything the media puts out when we know it has to generate money?
It’s the same principle as a salesman working on commission. Sure, he’d like to be honest, he’d like to have integrity. But when he needs money, honesty goes out the window. Do you believe everything a salesman tells you, knowing that he is biased? He only gets paid when he makes a sale, so isn’t he going to tell you whatever you want to hear in order to make that happen? Again, he might not want to, but when it comes to going without dinner or fudging the facts a bit, he’s going to fudge the facts.
If the media doesn’t entertain it goes under. If it can’t grab your attention everyday, it dies. These guys have to sell the news and they can’t do it if there’s nothing to sell. I think journalists should be called ‘construction workers’ because every day they have to make mountains out of a molehills.
I spoke with a friend of mine who was a cop for 32 years. He said, “Never trust anyone who buys ink in 55 gallon drums”. He went on to say that he got burned many times by the newspaper when it took what he said and twisted it out of context. The media isn’t made up of noble, moralistic people. These are people who thrive off the misery of others.
I used to listen to a sports radio show, and the commentators were complaining because there was no controversy. They said, “Well everyone’s getting along great…which I guess is good for them but its’ really bad for us.” The media goes bye-bye if everyone gets along. They are instigators—they ask questions that they hope will ignite some kind of fire. They stir up trouble where there isn’t any and don’t care what the consequences are as long as they get a story.
Not only is the media’s credibility shot by their need to manufacture news, it also suffers from blatant bias. I have witnessed several instances where the media took a statement or a set of facts and manipulated them to say something completely different. The media is comprised of people with their own beliefs and agendas and so they generate stories that agree with them. It is no secret that most of the news you hear has a political and social bias. If you can’t see it, I’m afraid nothing I can say is going to make it obvious to you. Most of the times the bias is overt—one side will get its voice heard a lot more than the other side, or there will simply be a greater number of negative stories about a particular person or point-of-view.
But sometimes the bias is subtle. For example, note the difference between, “He looked very concerned”, and “He looked very worried”. They both essentially say the same thing, but I would much rather be reported as looking “concerned” than “worried”. Concern shows strength…it’s more of a mental thing. I’m mulling over the problem. I’m not disregarding it, but I’m staying cool under the pressure. “Worried” makes it sound like I’m an emotional wreck. It makes me sound cowardly and timid with my eyes frantically darting about the room in anxiety. When the media likes an issue or politician, it uses subtle choices in diction to portray him, her or it in a positive way.
Every person has an opinion. Every person has a preference. The media is comprised of people—people who are taught to find their own voice, to not compromise their principles, and to seek out “truth”. Therefore, the “truth” is going to be what these people want it to be—what matches their voice and their principles. Of course they won’t admit to this. They are completely objective with no agenda. They have no personal opinions about anything, and if they do those opinions don’t factor at all into what they write.
The media insults our intelligence. Maybe they honestly think they cover it up well enough, or maybe they can’t even see it for themselves. But most of the time the headline itself gives it away, and anyone with any kind of a memory will find that the same stories have the same angles over and over again.
As I said, I have actually heard the truth get twisted by the media on several occasions. I have heard the media completely butcher the truth on several more occasions, and they only apologize for it half the time. Why should they? Who is keeping them honest? Unless you sue them (and what chance do you have against the lawyers they can hire and the influence they have in the justice system) they don’t care if you know they’re liars or not.
So not only is the news pointless, it’s also distorted and false a good portion of the time. How great is the hypocrisy of the media! They decry politicians for their lies and deceit while they themselves are guilty of it in far greater measure! So if we can’t even trust the meaningless drivel the media puts out…what is the point? What good does it do?
The answer is none. In fact, the media is one of the most destructive forces in this country.
Not long ago, three lacrosse players at Duke University were charged with rape by a stripper. She pointed them out in a lineup and said they were the ones who molested and raped her during a party. As it turned out, none of the boys did anything to her. A DNA test revealed that not only were the three boys innocent, but that the stripper had sexual contact with guys who weren’t even at the lacrosse party!
The stripper changed her story several times, especially when it was revealed that there was concrete video evidence that one of the guys she identified wasn’t even in the house during the alleged rape.
The girl was full of crap and told malicious lies that have permanently tarnished the reputations and lives of those three players. The coach got fired, the lacrosse season got canceled, and the players were kicked out of school.
Riots broke out, incited by the mindless mob who vehemently declared it to be a race crime since the boys were white and the girl was black. Unfortunately there are far too many ignorant, bitter, hateful people in this country who are just waiting for an excuse and someone to blame. They have no morality, no intelligence and no interest in the truth. They want violence and they want blood.
How did these people find out about this case? Our friends in the media.
Rush Limbaugh refers to the media as “the drive-by media” because they drive up, spray bullets into the crowd, report the mayhem, then drive off again to do it elsewhere, leaving a mess behind.
Whether you like the man or not, that is exactly what the media does. They tacked on the term “allegedly” when talking about the boys’ crimes but that doesn’t mean jack-squat anymore. The media uses the term “allegedly” even when a car-thief gets arrested after a high-speed chase that was caught on video. “Allegedly” is nothing but a CYA term. If it was really “alleged”, a responsible media wouldn’t report the story until it found out if anything really happened. After all, there are cases of rape not happening every day. That’s not news. Heck, I didn’t rape someone. Should my name and face be all over the news for three months because of it?
The fact that an irresponsible stripper accused some guys of raping her isn’t a story by any stretch of the imagination. It might make a great novel or movie, but it’s not news. Why? Because nothing has been proven. For all the media knew, the event never took place! The real news would have been the verdict after the trial. Again, I’d argue that for you and me the story is nothing but worthless entertainment, but if there had to be some kind of reporting done, it should have been on what did happen, not what “allegedly” happened.
The media isn’t dumb. It knew very well what would happen when it put that story out. It knew the chaos it would cause. Race has always been a big seller in the news and so it was here. Controversy, ruined lives, deceit, disaster, violence. It was everything the media needed. They protected the identity of the girl, even after it was proven she was a liar…but the boys…they were sacrificed for the story. Innocent college students got smeared by an irresponsible and reckless press that decided the rest of the world had a right to know about an accusation.
The story was reported as if the event actually took place. If you read it, you didn’t get a sense of doubt as to whether or not these guys did it, you just wondered why it was taking so long to convict them. Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, they were guilty because someone else said so.
In the end it was most likely a political stunt that the media was more than happy to help out with. They didn’t apologize for the way they reported the story, or that they reported it at all. They were directly and solely responsible for screwing those players over, and they simply moved on.
Blood suckers. Vile, contemptible blood suckers.
I already brought up the point that the media is eager to print leaks. Leaks are a nice way of saying, “Someone betrayed trust to blab about something they didn’t agree with”. Leaks are what traitors give out to hamstring their country and their opponents. Can you trust a traitor? Can you trust a tattle tale? How do we know the leaks are real? When a media that is notorious for lies and slander puts out “secret” information, how can you trust it?
Do you actually think the government can’t shut up the media if it really wants to? What can the media do? It’s not invincible. It’s not some kind of invisible presence that can’t be harmed. The media is flesh and blood. It can’t pass laws, it can’t prosecute and it can’t condemn. What is it going to do if one of its reporters gets killed because he went too far?
There may be some leaks that do some good, but none that I can think of. The leak about the wire-taps on terrorists didn’t do anything except spread unjustified fear that every American was under surveillance and had no privacy. It was a program that we didn’t need to know about and one that was actually helping us spy on terrorists until it was compromised by some jackal and then printed by a reporter desperate for a story.
I could go on and on. For some reason we have been inundated with leaks in the past few years. Again, no one forces the media to report these leaks. The media decides that we have the right to know (oh, and it may increase circulation and sales) and makes it so. And then it protects the source so that it can keep doing it!
It’s all good until someone you know or care about is hurt by a leak. We’ve already seen that reporters have no problem leaking events that occur during a grand jury even though they are forbidden to do so. What happens when you or I are in a grand jury and a reporter decides to leak something that was said or done in there that makes us look like criminals when we are not? Who will defend us? How will the wrong be righted? Certainly not by the media.
The media destroys lives. Destroyed lives make good stories, and who knows? Maybe one of those lacrosse boys might commit suicide from grief and despair in a couple of years and then the whole thing can be brought back up and dramatized again.
That brings up yet another strike on the media: it is redundant.
I took a journalism class in college and I learned about the inverted pyramid style of writing. You write a lead that tells the who, what, when, and where. Then you put all the important facts in the next two to three sentences. You do this because apparently the average reader doesn’t have the attention span to read the whole article, so you put the crucial information up front so the reader doesn’t have to search for the point before moving on. …Conveniently, that leaves out any chance they have of putting it in context and seeing a different truth than the one you’re putting forth.
So what this means is that all the new information takes up the first few sentences and the rest of the story is just meaningless details. For any story that lasts more than a day, it also means that you only get small tidbits of new information before having the same crap drilled into your head from the day before. The same is true of television.
The story breaks and then reporters spend hours analyzing it and talking about it until a little development occurs. Then they latch onto that, reanalyzing the whole situation before tacking on the new development. And on it goes. In one hour you might get twenty seconds of actual fact. The rest of it is speculation and interviews with “experts” who slowly shape the facts in the direction they want it to go. They have to entertain an audience and hold its attention and they have to achieve their agenda, so they report some facts and omit others. When they get one good solid fact that agrees with what they want, they repeat it over and over again.
Oftentimes to get that one fact, reporters will ask the same questions again and again. Have you ever seen an interview or press conference where it seems like the reporters were getting agitated and simply kept asking the same question in a different way? It genuinely offends and infuriates them to think that anyone would have the audacity to say “no comment” or “I don’t want to talk about that”. They’ll tear into a person if they get the answer they were fishing for, and they bash the person if they don’t give them the answer they were fishing for.
“Well he was very stand-offish…obviously has something to hide. Why else wouldn’t he answer my simple question?”
I’ve noticed that every ‘simple question’ they ask has a severe slant to it.
“Sir, most people would say that you’ve made a big mistake. How are you going to correct it? Do you feel bad?” The question has a faulty premise built into it: that the interviewee made a big mistake. It’s like the media tells someone, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to say you did regardless of whether or not it’s the truth. So based on what we’re going to report, are you going to defend yourself or apologize for it?” If the interviewee says, “No, I think it was the right decision,” then another reporter will get up and say, “But your popularity is down. Doesn’t that tell you there’s a problem that needs correcting?”
Same freak’in question, different way of phrasing it. Journalists have a one-track mind and they don’t care if they piss someone off to get what they want. In fact, if they can get the interviewee visibly angry or upset, they can use that to their advantage as well. They can report that the person is a zealot or firebrand, easily brought to anger by a few simple little questions. The media is a trap for anyone unfortunate enough to be out of their favor or against their agenda.
Not only do individual reporters repeat themselves, most all the news stations and newspapers echo each other as well. You get almost the exact same story with some details changed. Oftentimes those details are actually important to the story, so you begin to wonder just who has the “truth”. Anything that might be considered newsworthy could be listed on one piece of paper (sans editorials and opinions) and would take up all of five minutes of air time. But the media must justify its existence and its lengthy time on the airwaves, so it drags it all out until it has become a big ball of redundancy. Not all news is new news.
Perhaps one of the most damaging strikes against the media is that it’s just plain inaccurate. “Some experts say…” “Many people believe…” “Many would argue that…”
Have you ever noticed how often the media uses terms like that? Who are these experts? Why do they have credibility over other experts who disagree? Who are these people? What number constitutes “many”? How many people have you talked to in order to justify saying “many would argue”? Have many argued? These gross generalizations give artificial weight to statements and construct an illusion of authority.
Polls are another big one. Polls aren’t news! They are presented as if they reveal the ultimate truth, when in reality it’s a bunch of people reciting what they’ve heard on the news in the past! I don’t care how many people think hemlock is safe to ingest—it’s poison, pure and simple. Polls aren’t facts, they’re opinions. They’re actually gauges to tell the media just how many people are buying the crap that they’re selling.
When Katrina hit, the media reported that there were babies being raped in the stadium, that there was looting and rioting, and that approximately 25,000 people were dead.
No babies were raped, no looting and rioting took place, and about 1,500 people were found dead.
As for things like 911, I would argue that the event itself and its impact made it what it was, not the media. We would have heard about it without any news articles or video footage.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t know about these things, but our knowledge of the events doesn’t make us better people or even more intelligent. My life would be just as successful if I never heard about these things in the news. I don’t need the news at all—and neither do you.
How do I know? Because I’ve gone without the news for the past four years. No radio, no TV, no newspapers. I plan to keep it that way. I used to be oblivious to the news growing up, but I bought into the lies of the media and started lending it my ear. What was the difference? I found that I was gradually becoming more depressed and more frustrated because of how many stupid things people did and said. I was almost constantly pissed off because I had to listen to the politically correct crap coming from the talking heads of the news anchors and commentators. I got fed up with the bias and slants, the inequality and double standards. I found myself having a short temper and disliking people I used to get along with because they had different political and social views than I did.
I don’t like violence and destruction. I don’t like reality shows, and I certainly don’t like money-hungry hypocrites trying to pass off fiction as truth. I don’t stare at car accidents or try to see what happened. It’s none of my business, it doesn’t effect me. As long as the people involved are being taken care of I have no obligations. I can’t do anything for the people in New Orleans. I have enough on my plate that actually has consequences in my life to worry about stuff that doesn’t. I have a family, I have friends, I have a job, and I have commitments to fulfill. The last thing I need is to start getting distracted and filling my time with meaningless drivel at the expense of what is really important.
Since I gave up listening to the media, I’ve been happier, more relaxed, less worried and less aggravated. I’m not missing out on anything. When I vote, I’ll vote based on political affiliation. Such a thing has become taboo, but I have no other option. The media distorts and misrepresents the candidates so badly that I have no idea what they stand for. I want to get educated about what the candidates believe, but I have come to the conclusion that the media is incapable of providing that education. I’ll vote for the person who, by virtue of the party they represent, shares a good portion of my views and beliefs on most issues.
So someone tell me what I’m missing out on. Someone explain to me how being without the news is going to ruin my life or deprive me of joy. Explain to me why it’s so important to be informed, and how I can consider the distorted lies of the media to be information at all. Better yet, explain to me why the vipers in the media shouldn’t be locked up as criminals when they destroy lives by publishing leaks and covering stories that aren’t even confirmed yet. Tell me why these people can assassinate the character and reputation of individuals and then move on to the next flavor of the week without any consequences. Tell me who gave the media the right to tell me what’s right and wrong to say? Who gave them the ability to judge and decide that what I’ve done is reprehensible or sensible? Who can protect us from the media?
“The pen is mightier than the sword”. I believe that saying referred to a time when the pen was a substitute for the sword—when diplomacy and rhetoric took the place of violence and chaos. Unfortunately in this day in this country, the media has turned the pen into a sword, wielding it as a weapon to malign and destroy anything and anyone it chooses. And the media delights in the ensuing carnage and the gruesome aftermath—those things are its bloodline. The media has no desire to see a peaceful world free of suffering and turmoil. It used to be content merely to seek out and record the wickedness of mankind, but now it has taken upon itself to create it.
So come one, come all! Gather around your televisions, radios, and pick your newspaper up off the front stoop. Suspend your disbelief and throw aside reason and common sense. Find a comfortable seat, prop your feet up and enjoy the great Media Circus: The Lamest Show On Earth!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Film: True (Animal) Love
AAP Press Release
San Francisco, CA
Today approximately three thousand people gathered outside the Garrisonville Playhouse in San Francisco to protest the release of Four Legs of Romance, the controversial new film from Bent Truth Productions. Signs reading, “Morality now!”, “Leave Love Alone!” and “Where’s the Line?” are just some of the many slogans painted on poster boards that speckled the large mob.
“What gets me is that this is happening in our country,” Mark Tenan, one of the protestors, said. “This is America. America. …I never thought I’d see the day.”
Some protestors were much more verbose in their opposition, while others simply stood there either holding a sign or murmuring quiet prayers.
The film, its first showing scheduled for 7pm tomorrow, follows the story of a college student named Stuart who moves in with Marcus, his boyfriend of four years. However, the relationship sours when Marcus decides he doesn’t want to get married and says he wants to see other people. Seeking solace, Stuart finds Taylor at a local park and the two hit it off immediately. After spending weeks together, they become intimate, and eventually Stuart moves out and gets a place with his new lover.
The only catch is that Taylor is a 7-year-old golden retriever.
The film has sparked huge controversy nation-wide as both advocates and opponents of animal lovers have come face to face, speaking openly about the topic for the first time.
“No matter what you believe about this issue, I think it’s about time it gets the attention it deserves,” Congressman William Cobbles (D-Nevada) said in a press release this morning.
“I think open debate is good,” Gordon Marr, the chairman of the Animal and Human Union Group (AHUG) said. “People have been trying to criminalize and undercut this movement for nearly ten years—it’s about time the real issues of rights and freedom come to light.”
Others aren’t so enthusiastic. “The fact that this issue has even come up for debate is an insult to our dignity as humans, as well as an affront to the dwindling morality left in this country,” Michael Winfreid, leader of the Red Line Coalition said upon hearing of the movies’ release.
The movie is said to attack the very heart of the matter in question, its tagline bearing the commonly uttered phrase, “Love Knows No Bounds.”
“It’s an epic—a traditional American love story that shows a dynamic of selfless love that most people are ignorant of,” Stephen McGainis, director and producer of Four Legs of Romance said in defense to a storm of criticism. “There is a lot of misunderstanding and hatred out there, as well as a lot of people who have a serious God-complex. …This film will be a wake-up call to anyone with an open mind and heart.”
The controversy of zoophilia, or the sexual attraction of a human to an animal, started nearly 10 years ago after an ill-fated affair between Kenny Lawrence of Seattle and a Clydesdale named Laurie. Shortly after his death, Kenny’s brother and sole witness of the event sued the horse owner for forcing the affair to remain secret.
“Kenny would come by to visit [Laurie] and give her some fresh carrots because McGregor wasn’t feeding her well,” Jim Lawrence said. “One day McGregor comes out and finds Kenny and me with Laurie, and instead of understanding he went off and got his shotgun. He said we weren’t to come around anymore and he’d shoot us if he saw us again. The only way Kenny could see her was at night—and that’s why the accident happened.”
After almost two months of trials and testimonies, the jury ruled in favor of Jim Lawrence, awarding him $2.1 million for the accident.
“No one should have to see his brother die like that,” an unnamed juror said afterwards.
Since that ruling, zoophiles everywhere began stepping out and standing up for what they believe. Prominent celebrities like Terry Wilkinson and Veronica West gave even more strength to the movement and gave zoophiles everywhere hope that their love would one day be recognized.
“It’s so hard,” Beth Saunders, an admitted zoophile said, “trying to keep it a secret. I don’t have to worry about him saying anything, but he’s smart enough to know that I’m uncomfortable introducing him to my friends.”
“This is supposed to be a free country,” Maurice Higgins of the ACLU said, “and what kind of free country is it when people aren’t allowed to share their lives without fear of abuse and persecution?”
“I got fired from my job when I claimed Brownie on my tax and employment forms,” Gary Zimmerman, author of the book Lawless Making Laws said about his two-year-old canine. “Why should I have to take her to the vet? She deserves better than that.”
The debate has even divided the homosexual community—a fact that comes as a surprise for many people. Some gays believe that animal lovers should be given the same rights they have, while others see it as a separate issue completely.
“It’s an insult, it really is,” Allen Watson, an alternative-lifestyle-husband and father of three said. “Our cause was for love between two humans to not be judged because of sexual orientation. We’re talking about two different species here! It’s not the same, not the same at all, and it’s infuriating that we’d be compared to animals.”
Louis Frindell Gist of the Social Observers Guild, and professor of Inter-Specie Relationships at Harvard University sees homosexual opposition as hypocritical. “Love doesn’t know bounds of any kind, whether it’s social, economic, racial or specie-related. Twenty years ago homosexuality was standing right where zoophilia is today. It wasn’t widely accepted and it was met with ignorant opposition. These people know what it’s like to be victimized and persecuted because they have different orientations from everyone else. For them to draw the line here makes no sense.”
Dr. George Carter, chairman of the Abnormal Psychology Department at UCLA has studied zoophilia for many years and arrived at a similar conclusion. “Many people have a deep love for their pets. We’ve seen cases where there is a 2-3 year grieving period for the loss of an animal friend, as well as a lack of a desire to get another animal afterwards. There is a great deal of loyalty shared between both animals and humans that create a natural bond; sexual intimacy is a natural and logical step in the exploration of such a relationship. It’s true we are of different species, but doesn’t a dog have a heart? A mind? A soul? A body? He or she makes decisions, shows pain, fear, happiness, and every other emotion we experience as humans. The only reason this is unnatural is because it isn’t normal. In fact, I expect zoophilia to disappear from the ‘abnormal’ studies in the next few years.”
Some advocates of animal love accuse the church and spiritual leaders of intolerance and a complete misinterpretation of scripture. “God said he put animals on the earth for man’s pleasure,” Seymour Armstrong, author of the Zoophilia Bible claims. “They were his companions, just like Eve was. The only forbidden act was eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil. It’s excessive pride for these religious leaders to stand up and denounce animal love as lustful and abominable. They think just because it’s strange to them and they don’t understand it that they have the right to judge us?”
A glance over some zoophilia blogs will show that the persecution does not go unnoticed—by either the human or animal.
“I didn’t choose this—I was born this way,” Kelly Mills laments. “This is the only love I’ve ever known. No person has ever been to me what Cheezey is, and I don’t see how anyone will. He’s sweet, he’s understanding, he’s open, and he never puts me down or makes me feel like I don’t matter. There are all these women getting abused by their husbands and that’s normal, but here’s someone who’s never laid a paw on me and he’s treated like dirt.”
“Every time the news comes on, Tiny’s ears droop and he gets really depressed,” Chad Hylton said of his cocker spaniel. “He knows what’s going on. People think animals are dumb, but they’re not. You wouldn’t talk about someone’s human wife like this…I don’t understand how you can do it to an animal.”
While most critics are set in their denial of true animal love, many are simply skeptical. “I don’t get it, but I’m open minded,” an anonymous man said. “I mean, I don’t think I have a right to deny anyone true love…and if they find it with an animal that’s great for them.”
“They aren’t hurting anyone,” Bill Baxter, a lawyer for zoophile rights argues. “It makes them happy, and it’s not interfering with anyone else’s life. This is an issue about human rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If a loving an intimate relationship makes someone happy, no one has the grounds to deny that to them.”
“To say that my love for Fluffy is any less significant or powerful is wrong and it’s judgmental. This is who I am, and I’m fine with it. It’s everyone else who has the problem.”
While no significant court rulings have been made to date, the issue is expected to go to the Supreme Court within the next five years—a timetable many believe has been shortened by McGainis’ film.
“Media exposure like this will bring the struggle to a head much quicker than previously thought,” said Betty Almonds, a movie reviewer for the New York Times. “It’s a compelling piece that reveals the legitimate passion and deep love that can exist when an animal and human connect. Artistically it’s a masterpiece that is accented by some vulnerable and honest performances.” Almonds was one of ten critics to be invited to a private screening of the film last weekend. “Dislike for this movie won’t come from its execution or presentation, but from bias’s and misunderstandings of the subject matter,” she added.
Regardless of the case or the rulings, most Americans say zoophilia will never be accepted. “You can make it legal, but it doesn’t make it right,” said college student Martin Thomas. “I lost faith in our courts to make moral decisions, so I don’t doubt that there might be legal marriages for animal lovers one day. You can distort and pervert it as much as you want, but it can’t be justified.”
Regardless of the dispute, the film has sold out in the ten theaters it is scheduled to open in and there are already rumors that similarly themed projects are in the works. “It’s a universal theme about love, understanding, and finding happiness,” said Phillip Lodge, who is the voice of Taylor’s inner thoughts. “Sex isn’t this sacred thing—it’s something we do to express our feelings, and we need to rethink the limits we put on the expression.”
McGainis concluded his press release with this statement. “In 100 years, people won’t look at zoophilia as a disease or strange act. It will be a part of society. Kids born in the future won’t think there’s anything wrong with it because it’ll be normal. They’ll know there was a time when humanity tried to oppress freedom and belittled those who fought for it. I guess, in a way, I’m just trying to find myself on the right side of history.”
An Alternate Press Release by Trevor D. Sylte,
December 9, 2017
San Francisco, CA
Today approximately three thousand people gathered outside the Garrisonville Playhouse in San Francisco to protest the release of Four Legs of Romance, the controversial new film from Bent Truth Productions. Signs reading, “Morality now!”, “Leave Love Alone!” and “Where’s the Line?” are just some of the many slogans painted on poster boards that speckled the large mob.
“What gets me is that this is happening in our country,” Mark Tenan, one of the protestors, said. “This is America. America. …I never thought I’d see the day.”
Some protestors were much more verbose in their opposition, while others simply stood there either holding a sign or murmuring quiet prayers.
The film, its first showing scheduled for 7pm tomorrow, follows the story of a college student named Stuart who moves in with Marcus, his boyfriend of four years. However, the relationship sours when Marcus decides he doesn’t want to get married and says he wants to see other people. Seeking solace, Stuart finds Taylor at a local park and the two hit it off immediately. After spending weeks together, they become intimate, and eventually Stuart moves out and gets a place with his new lover.
The only catch is that Taylor is a 7-year-old golden retriever.
The film has sparked huge controversy nation-wide as both advocates and opponents of animal lovers have come face to face, speaking openly about the topic for the first time.
“No matter what you believe about this issue, I think it’s about time it gets the attention it deserves,” Congressman William Cobbles (D-Nevada) said in a press release this morning.
“I think open debate is good,” Gordon Marr, the chairman of the Animal and Human Union Group (AHUG) said. “People have been trying to criminalize and undercut this movement for nearly ten years—it’s about time the real issues of rights and freedom come to light.”
Others aren’t so enthusiastic. “The fact that this issue has even come up for debate is an insult to our dignity as humans, as well as an affront to the dwindling morality left in this country,” Michael Winfreid, leader of the Red Line Coalition said upon hearing of the movies’ release.
The movie is said to attack the very heart of the matter in question, its tagline bearing the commonly uttered phrase, “Love Knows No Bounds.”
“It’s an epic—a traditional American love story that shows a dynamic of selfless love that most people are ignorant of,” Stephen McGainis, director and producer of Four Legs of Romance said in defense to a storm of criticism. “There is a lot of misunderstanding and hatred out there, as well as a lot of people who have a serious God-complex. …This film will be a wake-up call to anyone with an open mind and heart.”
The controversy of zoophilia, or the sexual attraction of a human to an animal, started nearly 10 years ago after an ill-fated affair between Kenny Lawrence of Seattle and a Clydesdale named Laurie. Shortly after his death, Kenny’s brother and sole witness of the event sued the horse owner for forcing the affair to remain secret.
“Kenny would come by to visit [Laurie] and give her some fresh carrots because McGregor wasn’t feeding her well,” Jim Lawrence said. “One day McGregor comes out and finds Kenny and me with Laurie, and instead of understanding he went off and got his shotgun. He said we weren’t to come around anymore and he’d shoot us if he saw us again. The only way Kenny could see her was at night—and that’s why the accident happened.”
After almost two months of trials and testimonies, the jury ruled in favor of Jim Lawrence, awarding him $2.1 million for the accident.
“No one should have to see his brother die like that,” an unnamed juror said afterwards.
Since that ruling, zoophiles everywhere began stepping out and standing up for what they believe. Prominent celebrities like Terry Wilkinson and Veronica West gave even more strength to the movement and gave zoophiles everywhere hope that their love would one day be recognized.
“It’s so hard,” Beth Saunders, an admitted zoophile said, “trying to keep it a secret. I don’t have to worry about him saying anything, but he’s smart enough to know that I’m uncomfortable introducing him to my friends.”
“This is supposed to be a free country,” Maurice Higgins of the ACLU said, “and what kind of free country is it when people aren’t allowed to share their lives without fear of abuse and persecution?”
“I got fired from my job when I claimed Brownie on my tax and employment forms,” Gary Zimmerman, author of the book Lawless Making Laws said about his two-year-old canine. “Why should I have to take her to the vet? She deserves better than that.”
The debate has even divided the homosexual community—a fact that comes as a surprise for many people. Some gays believe that animal lovers should be given the same rights they have, while others see it as a separate issue completely.
“It’s an insult, it really is,” Allen Watson, an alternative-lifestyle-husband and father of three said. “Our cause was for love between two humans to not be judged because of sexual orientation. We’re talking about two different species here! It’s not the same, not the same at all, and it’s infuriating that we’d be compared to animals.”
Louis Frindell Gist of the Social Observers Guild, and professor of Inter-Specie Relationships at Harvard University sees homosexual opposition as hypocritical. “Love doesn’t know bounds of any kind, whether it’s social, economic, racial or specie-related. Twenty years ago homosexuality was standing right where zoophilia is today. It wasn’t widely accepted and it was met with ignorant opposition. These people know what it’s like to be victimized and persecuted because they have different orientations from everyone else. For them to draw the line here makes no sense.”
Dr. George Carter, chairman of the Abnormal Psychology Department at UCLA has studied zoophilia for many years and arrived at a similar conclusion. “Many people have a deep love for their pets. We’ve seen cases where there is a 2-3 year grieving period for the loss of an animal friend, as well as a lack of a desire to get another animal afterwards. There is a great deal of loyalty shared between both animals and humans that create a natural bond; sexual intimacy is a natural and logical step in the exploration of such a relationship. It’s true we are of different species, but doesn’t a dog have a heart? A mind? A soul? A body? He or she makes decisions, shows pain, fear, happiness, and every other emotion we experience as humans. The only reason this is unnatural is because it isn’t normal. In fact, I expect zoophilia to disappear from the ‘abnormal’ studies in the next few years.”
Some advocates of animal love accuse the church and spiritual leaders of intolerance and a complete misinterpretation of scripture. “God said he put animals on the earth for man’s pleasure,” Seymour Armstrong, author of the Zoophilia Bible claims. “They were his companions, just like Eve was. The only forbidden act was eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil. It’s excessive pride for these religious leaders to stand up and denounce animal love as lustful and abominable. They think just because it’s strange to them and they don’t understand it that they have the right to judge us?”
A glance over some zoophilia blogs will show that the persecution does not go unnoticed—by either the human or animal.
“I didn’t choose this—I was born this way,” Kelly Mills laments. “This is the only love I’ve ever known. No person has ever been to me what Cheezey is, and I don’t see how anyone will. He’s sweet, he’s understanding, he’s open, and he never puts me down or makes me feel like I don’t matter. There are all these women getting abused by their husbands and that’s normal, but here’s someone who’s never laid a paw on me and he’s treated like dirt.”
“Every time the news comes on, Tiny’s ears droop and he gets really depressed,” Chad Hylton said of his cocker spaniel. “He knows what’s going on. People think animals are dumb, but they’re not. You wouldn’t talk about someone’s human wife like this…I don’t understand how you can do it to an animal.”
While most critics are set in their denial of true animal love, many are simply skeptical. “I don’t get it, but I’m open minded,” an anonymous man said. “I mean, I don’t think I have a right to deny anyone true love…and if they find it with an animal that’s great for them.”
“They aren’t hurting anyone,” Bill Baxter, a lawyer for zoophile rights argues. “It makes them happy, and it’s not interfering with anyone else’s life. This is an issue about human rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If a loving an intimate relationship makes someone happy, no one has the grounds to deny that to them.”
“To say that my love for Fluffy is any less significant or powerful is wrong and it’s judgmental. This is who I am, and I’m fine with it. It’s everyone else who has the problem.”
While no significant court rulings have been made to date, the issue is expected to go to the Supreme Court within the next five years—a timetable many believe has been shortened by McGainis’ film.
“Media exposure like this will bring the struggle to a head much quicker than previously thought,” said Betty Almonds, a movie reviewer for the New York Times. “It’s a compelling piece that reveals the legitimate passion and deep love that can exist when an animal and human connect. Artistically it’s a masterpiece that is accented by some vulnerable and honest performances.” Almonds was one of ten critics to be invited to a private screening of the film last weekend. “Dislike for this movie won’t come from its execution or presentation, but from bias’s and misunderstandings of the subject matter,” she added.
Regardless of the case or the rulings, most Americans say zoophilia will never be accepted. “You can make it legal, but it doesn’t make it right,” said college student Martin Thomas. “I lost faith in our courts to make moral decisions, so I don’t doubt that there might be legal marriages for animal lovers one day. You can distort and pervert it as much as you want, but it can’t be justified.”
Regardless of the dispute, the film has sold out in the ten theaters it is scheduled to open in and there are already rumors that similarly themed projects are in the works. “It’s a universal theme about love, understanding, and finding happiness,” said Phillip Lodge, who is the voice of Taylor’s inner thoughts. “Sex isn’t this sacred thing—it’s something we do to express our feelings, and we need to rethink the limits we put on the expression.”
McGainis concluded his press release with this statement. “In 100 years, people won’t look at zoophilia as a disease or strange act. It will be a part of society. Kids born in the future won’t think there’s anything wrong with it because it’ll be normal. They’ll know there was a time when humanity tried to oppress freedom and belittled those who fought for it. I guess, in a way, I’m just trying to find myself on the right side of history.”
An Alternate Press Release by Trevor D. Sylte,
December 9, 2017
Hypothetically Speaking...
“Today will be partly sunny, overcast later in the day with a chance of showers…”
“I think Smith’s injury is going to have a huge impact on how well these guys can move the ball…”
“A new study by medical experts shows that oxygen might cause cancer, despite previous theories to the contrary…”
“If the Democrats fail to make an impact on this issue, the Republicans are going to take the majority again this year and most likely get another Republican in the White House in ’08…”
“Statistics show that about one in every five people is likely to suffer a stroke by the age of 65…”
“Approximately fifty percent of this country disagrees with what the president is doing…”
“I don’t want to speculate before the press conference, but it looks pretty certain that what we are seeing is a complete mental breakdown. I’ve called on other experts to offer their opinions…”
We live in a world disgustingly saturated with hypothetical bias. Everything from a four-hour-long-pre-game show, to an interview with political analysts, to a weather forecast—they are all constructed by material that does not exist. Companies are paid exuberant amounts of money by the government and other private companies to simulate everything from relational interactions to warfare scenarios and storm paths, and the accuracy rate for such simulations is under 40%.
I’ve heard guys laugh at “nerds” who argue over whether or not a Super Star Destroyer could take on seventeen regular Star Destroyers. They laugh because Star Wars is a fantasy and there is no point about arguing over something that’s not real. But the same guys who find Star Wars debates so ridiculous are absolutely glued to the set when ESPN’s best and brightest argue over what is going to take place two days in the future during Sunday’s big games. O hypocrites!
The only difference between Star Wars and a football game is that the football game will happen in our reality and there will be a subsequent effect on some people’s lives. But for 99% of the fans who haven’t bet on the game, their lives will go on just as if the game was a fantasy. They won’t see another dime on their paychecks, their spouses won’t love them any more or less, gas prices will not drop or skyrocket, they’ll still have to go to work, they’ll still have all the problems they had before the game started.
Those guys on ESPN are essentially indulging in the same fantastical debates as the Star Wars fans. Nothing the guys say or do will change reality, and they are both operating out of a realm of the non-existent. Star Wars fans take specs and information provided by George Lucas and draw conclusions based on them. ESPN guys take injuries, history, and stats to form conclusions as to how the match up will go.
The bonus for Star Wars fans is that they can never be proven wrong, while the ESPN guys are embarrassed time and time again when reality grinds their hypothetical, non-existent game into dust. An injury they thought would take the running game out of an offense, thereby shifting the entire balance of the game, ends up being a non-factor when the second-string running back has a fantastic performance despite his prior string of poor performances. A team they discussed for hours on end as being Super Bowl contenders just inexplicably fails to show up and gets demolished by a 14-point underdog.
Weathermen. What good are they? If Mr. Vane the weatherman tells me there’s only a three percent chance of rain, and I plan a huge outdoor picnic, and it rains, what the heck do I care what the percentages were? The fact was it did rain. I don’t care if the odds were less than a percentage point or if it was a sure fire bet. I’m wet and my picnic is ruined regardless. And where exactly did Mr. Vane pull that percentage from? What exactly in the radar gives anything in the way of a mathematical estimate of how likely a certain weather pattern is to emerge? Seems like there’s going to be some human guesstimation happening, and since both the world and the weather are in a constant state of change, it doesn’t seem like a guesstimation has very good chance of being accurate.
And it doesn’t!
A news story breaks at 9am based on some hypothetically sound information, and analysts and experts debate for ten hours until the press conference reveals that it was all a misunderstanding and the situation never really happened.
That’s the key. Technically, for all those people who create hypothetical scenarios, when what they say doesn’t happen, they have just indulged in debating a fantasy just like Star Wars. For anyone having a difficult time drawing the connection, I’ll bridge the gap between Star Wars and ESPN with this: Bruce Lee versus Mike Tyson. I have heard this hypothetical fight debated many times. It involves two people that existed in the real world at the same time, who technically could have actually fought each other. But the fight never did happen and it never will. So just because a football game involves people that actually exist, like Mike and Bruce, it doesn’t mean that the debate about the victor or the strategies used will be any more pertinent to real life than something that is pure fiction.
The same is especially true in politics. Expert One says there’s no way a female could take the White House, and Expert Two disagrees. The two do verbal battle for four long years, bringing in other experts and citing polling data that agrees with them. They elaborate and debate and conjure support for their perspectives, only to find that there is no woman on the ballot. Every word those two experts spoke was a waste. It was a debate about something that didn’t happen, therefore it was pure fantasy, and therefore it had no effect whatsoever on society.
That’s another thing. Who are these experts? What does an expert do when he/she isn’t giving their opinions? Who bestows upon them the title of “expert”? Who gave that person the authority to be an expert on experts? It’s not a title. You can be a doctor of something, but there is no working “expert” title. And how much is that title worth when you have two “experts” who disagree with each other? They both can’t be right. If one of them says that the new durinum alloy on the spaceship will burn up on reentry and the other one says it won’t, one of them will be wrong. But they are both experts! We are listening to their opinions, giving them airtime and attention because they are supposed to know more than us, but one of them will be just as wrong as we would be! Who cares why? And does that erroneous “expert” get demoted? No. He goes right on being an expert, waiting in his magic “expert lair” until the media decides to question him again.
I listen to one expert say such-and-such won’t be a deciding factor in the presidential elections, and I hear another expert say just the opposite. Great, now I have to believe who I want to believe and hope that guy is right. The cruel joke is that one expert can be wrong in one instance but be right in another, so there’s no way to ever discover who the true expert is; there isn’t one.
And across the board—weathermen, political experts, ESPN guys—none of them flat out admit when they are wrong. What they do is engage in damage control; that is they analyze what actually happened and work backwards to show how their theory had validity in an abstract way, or to remind us that even though they didn’t say it, of course there was a chance the exact opposite of what they predicted could happen.
Polls are another worthless piece of fodder. The only polls I care about are the ones at the top and bottom of our planet that keep us rotating properly. You can have the best sampling in the world and still be off. Considering how many variables factor into public opinion about anything, the odds of being able to get an accurate fix from any kind of sample are horrible. And if you tell me that polls are just to give me a rough idea, then why the heck do I care? Even if the poll is right, what does that say? I would venture to guess (though I’m no expert) that the vast majority of people polled about any given topic lack sufficient information to give a valid opinion.
Let’s ask a bunch of average Joe’s and Sue’s say what they think about our foreign policy. Forget that Joe and Sue don’t know a fifth of the laws and regulations that are in place to guide foreign policy, and that they have little more than a vague notion about who actually has what responsibility in our government. Add to that the score of information that is classified or confidential and you’ve got a relatively ignorant Joe and Sue making a very uneducated call. So remind me again why I or anyone else should care? “A bunch of people who don’t know anything about the subject offer their advice and opinions on this, our latest and greatest poll!” …Whoopee.
Sampling works in science because the factors and variables are known and/or controlled. While anything and everything can happen in an experiment, there generally aren’t the issues of human emotion, history, education, social standing, and ulterior motives, all of which can change in an instant. All a poll says is that those specific people, not even five percent of our nation, lean towards one particular opinion. Where’s the value in that?
Our lives are taken up with hypothetical information. Supposedly 75 percent of America will be obese in thirty years. So? Can we change that? Is there a call to action? If we change our lifestyles to avoid such a calamity, the statistic is worthless. Who could say it wouldn’t have dropped on its own? It’s not accurate therefore it is fantasy. And if we don’t change anything and three-quarters of us do become obese, what was the point in giving us the statistic thirty years in advance?
Hypothetical information cannot be proven until it is too late. By the time theories are put into a place where they can be authenticated or discarded, the point is moot. Some experts say vitamins might actually cause cancer. Other experts disagree. What good is their information to me? Even with my limited knowledge on vitamins, I know they can help me, hurt me, or do nothing. Those are my only options. Having people in the news remind me of those options is redundant.
Never mind the fact that there are so many exceptions to everything. My dad smoked cigarettes for 22 years and then cigars for the past 10. His lungs are clean as can be. My great grandfather smoked every day of his life starting in his teens and he lived until he was 95. My friend’s uncle smoked for three years, quit, and died of cancer at 45. You could tell my grandfather that smoking would increase his chances of dying early by 46.5% and what would it have changed? How many exceptions can there be to a rule before it is no longer considered a rule?
I think this hypothetical hype exists because, despite our many advances, we as humans still know very little about ourselves or the world we live in. Hypothetical musings are our way of pretending we understand our world, or more importantly that we can predict and even control it. After all, it isn’t until something actually happens that we can be proven wrong, and generally we have a 50% chance of being right when the time comes anyway. We take comfort in our statistics and odds, despite the fact that every day those odds are swept away and statistics are proven useless. If there is a shooting in a high school and the odds are that only two out of three hundred students are going to die, it seems very unlikely that you will be killed, right? Those are good, safe odds…unless you are one of the two to get shot. Then it doesn’t matter how statistically tiny your chances were—you got shot. You weren’t protected by the statistics…in fact, the false sense of security might have been your undoing!
The bottom line is that we need to stop clouding our time, energy, and thoughts with what-if’s. Nothing is certain, and no amount of expert opinion is going to change the countless uncertainties we face as humans every day. We take chances when we get up, when we drive our cars, when we eat a meal, and even when we lay down to sleep. We will all die sometime, whether it’s from a bee sting, shark bite, some form of cancer, drowning, murder, or old age. This world and this life were not meant to be figured out or confined to a formula. We live in a digital age where everything is a 0 or 1, but our lives are analogue.
Regardless of when or how we die, life is much too short for us to be spending countless hours lost in a world of fantasy that is insulated by hypothetical musings and statistics.
“Do you think these guys actually expected to win?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, 9 out of 10 teams who lost the first two games in
the series ended up losing, so I’m thinking they expected defeat.”
“See, I don’t know. Coach Schweitzer has always had a winner’s mentality that you can see in seventeen of his last twenty games.”
“Yes but remember he had a different squad of guys around him this year. If you
look at their mood during the interviews leading up to this game, it seemed like most of them had accepted defeat.”
“Well they didn’t expect for Santa Fe’s star defensive player to get injured in the first two minutes of play either.”
“That’s true too. We all thought he would play a big role in the game, but as we
know it doesn’t take much to change everything.”
“How do you think the team will do next year?”
“If their defense can get back on track and they make some key picks, I think we could see them here next year, no doubt.”
“But if they make bad picks and their defense stays the same they might not have such
a good chance.”
“That’s true too.”
“I think Smith’s injury is going to have a huge impact on how well these guys can move the ball…”
“A new study by medical experts shows that oxygen might cause cancer, despite previous theories to the contrary…”
“If the Democrats fail to make an impact on this issue, the Republicans are going to take the majority again this year and most likely get another Republican in the White House in ’08…”
“Statistics show that about one in every five people is likely to suffer a stroke by the age of 65…”
“Approximately fifty percent of this country disagrees with what the president is doing…”
“I don’t want to speculate before the press conference, but it looks pretty certain that what we are seeing is a complete mental breakdown. I’ve called on other experts to offer their opinions…”
We live in a world disgustingly saturated with hypothetical bias. Everything from a four-hour-long-pre-game show, to an interview with political analysts, to a weather forecast—they are all constructed by material that does not exist. Companies are paid exuberant amounts of money by the government and other private companies to simulate everything from relational interactions to warfare scenarios and storm paths, and the accuracy rate for such simulations is under 40%.
I’ve heard guys laugh at “nerds” who argue over whether or not a Super Star Destroyer could take on seventeen regular Star Destroyers. They laugh because Star Wars is a fantasy and there is no point about arguing over something that’s not real. But the same guys who find Star Wars debates so ridiculous are absolutely glued to the set when ESPN’s best and brightest argue over what is going to take place two days in the future during Sunday’s big games. O hypocrites!
The only difference between Star Wars and a football game is that the football game will happen in our reality and there will be a subsequent effect on some people’s lives. But for 99% of the fans who haven’t bet on the game, their lives will go on just as if the game was a fantasy. They won’t see another dime on their paychecks, their spouses won’t love them any more or less, gas prices will not drop or skyrocket, they’ll still have to go to work, they’ll still have all the problems they had before the game started.
Those guys on ESPN are essentially indulging in the same fantastical debates as the Star Wars fans. Nothing the guys say or do will change reality, and they are both operating out of a realm of the non-existent. Star Wars fans take specs and information provided by George Lucas and draw conclusions based on them. ESPN guys take injuries, history, and stats to form conclusions as to how the match up will go.
The bonus for Star Wars fans is that they can never be proven wrong, while the ESPN guys are embarrassed time and time again when reality grinds their hypothetical, non-existent game into dust. An injury they thought would take the running game out of an offense, thereby shifting the entire balance of the game, ends up being a non-factor when the second-string running back has a fantastic performance despite his prior string of poor performances. A team they discussed for hours on end as being Super Bowl contenders just inexplicably fails to show up and gets demolished by a 14-point underdog.
Weathermen. What good are they? If Mr. Vane the weatherman tells me there’s only a three percent chance of rain, and I plan a huge outdoor picnic, and it rains, what the heck do I care what the percentages were? The fact was it did rain. I don’t care if the odds were less than a percentage point or if it was a sure fire bet. I’m wet and my picnic is ruined regardless. And where exactly did Mr. Vane pull that percentage from? What exactly in the radar gives anything in the way of a mathematical estimate of how likely a certain weather pattern is to emerge? Seems like there’s going to be some human guesstimation happening, and since both the world and the weather are in a constant state of change, it doesn’t seem like a guesstimation has very good chance of being accurate.
And it doesn’t!
A news story breaks at 9am based on some hypothetically sound information, and analysts and experts debate for ten hours until the press conference reveals that it was all a misunderstanding and the situation never really happened.
That’s the key. Technically, for all those people who create hypothetical scenarios, when what they say doesn’t happen, they have just indulged in debating a fantasy just like Star Wars. For anyone having a difficult time drawing the connection, I’ll bridge the gap between Star Wars and ESPN with this: Bruce Lee versus Mike Tyson. I have heard this hypothetical fight debated many times. It involves two people that existed in the real world at the same time, who technically could have actually fought each other. But the fight never did happen and it never will. So just because a football game involves people that actually exist, like Mike and Bruce, it doesn’t mean that the debate about the victor or the strategies used will be any more pertinent to real life than something that is pure fiction.
The same is especially true in politics. Expert One says there’s no way a female could take the White House, and Expert Two disagrees. The two do verbal battle for four long years, bringing in other experts and citing polling data that agrees with them. They elaborate and debate and conjure support for their perspectives, only to find that there is no woman on the ballot. Every word those two experts spoke was a waste. It was a debate about something that didn’t happen, therefore it was pure fantasy, and therefore it had no effect whatsoever on society.
That’s another thing. Who are these experts? What does an expert do when he/she isn’t giving their opinions? Who bestows upon them the title of “expert”? Who gave that person the authority to be an expert on experts? It’s not a title. You can be a doctor of something, but there is no working “expert” title. And how much is that title worth when you have two “experts” who disagree with each other? They both can’t be right. If one of them says that the new durinum alloy on the spaceship will burn up on reentry and the other one says it won’t, one of them will be wrong. But they are both experts! We are listening to their opinions, giving them airtime and attention because they are supposed to know more than us, but one of them will be just as wrong as we would be! Who cares why? And does that erroneous “expert” get demoted? No. He goes right on being an expert, waiting in his magic “expert lair” until the media decides to question him again.
I listen to one expert say such-and-such won’t be a deciding factor in the presidential elections, and I hear another expert say just the opposite. Great, now I have to believe who I want to believe and hope that guy is right. The cruel joke is that one expert can be wrong in one instance but be right in another, so there’s no way to ever discover who the true expert is; there isn’t one.
And across the board—weathermen, political experts, ESPN guys—none of them flat out admit when they are wrong. What they do is engage in damage control; that is they analyze what actually happened and work backwards to show how their theory had validity in an abstract way, or to remind us that even though they didn’t say it, of course there was a chance the exact opposite of what they predicted could happen.
Polls are another worthless piece of fodder. The only polls I care about are the ones at the top and bottom of our planet that keep us rotating properly. You can have the best sampling in the world and still be off. Considering how many variables factor into public opinion about anything, the odds of being able to get an accurate fix from any kind of sample are horrible. And if you tell me that polls are just to give me a rough idea, then why the heck do I care? Even if the poll is right, what does that say? I would venture to guess (though I’m no expert) that the vast majority of people polled about any given topic lack sufficient information to give a valid opinion.
Let’s ask a bunch of average Joe’s and Sue’s say what they think about our foreign policy. Forget that Joe and Sue don’t know a fifth of the laws and regulations that are in place to guide foreign policy, and that they have little more than a vague notion about who actually has what responsibility in our government. Add to that the score of information that is classified or confidential and you’ve got a relatively ignorant Joe and Sue making a very uneducated call. So remind me again why I or anyone else should care? “A bunch of people who don’t know anything about the subject offer their advice and opinions on this, our latest and greatest poll!” …Whoopee.
Sampling works in science because the factors and variables are known and/or controlled. While anything and everything can happen in an experiment, there generally aren’t the issues of human emotion, history, education, social standing, and ulterior motives, all of which can change in an instant. All a poll says is that those specific people, not even five percent of our nation, lean towards one particular opinion. Where’s the value in that?
Our lives are taken up with hypothetical information. Supposedly 75 percent of America will be obese in thirty years. So? Can we change that? Is there a call to action? If we change our lifestyles to avoid such a calamity, the statistic is worthless. Who could say it wouldn’t have dropped on its own? It’s not accurate therefore it is fantasy. And if we don’t change anything and three-quarters of us do become obese, what was the point in giving us the statistic thirty years in advance?
Hypothetical information cannot be proven until it is too late. By the time theories are put into a place where they can be authenticated or discarded, the point is moot. Some experts say vitamins might actually cause cancer. Other experts disagree. What good is their information to me? Even with my limited knowledge on vitamins, I know they can help me, hurt me, or do nothing. Those are my only options. Having people in the news remind me of those options is redundant.
Never mind the fact that there are so many exceptions to everything. My dad smoked cigarettes for 22 years and then cigars for the past 10. His lungs are clean as can be. My great grandfather smoked every day of his life starting in his teens and he lived until he was 95. My friend’s uncle smoked for three years, quit, and died of cancer at 45. You could tell my grandfather that smoking would increase his chances of dying early by 46.5% and what would it have changed? How many exceptions can there be to a rule before it is no longer considered a rule?
I think this hypothetical hype exists because, despite our many advances, we as humans still know very little about ourselves or the world we live in. Hypothetical musings are our way of pretending we understand our world, or more importantly that we can predict and even control it. After all, it isn’t until something actually happens that we can be proven wrong, and generally we have a 50% chance of being right when the time comes anyway. We take comfort in our statistics and odds, despite the fact that every day those odds are swept away and statistics are proven useless. If there is a shooting in a high school and the odds are that only two out of three hundred students are going to die, it seems very unlikely that you will be killed, right? Those are good, safe odds…unless you are one of the two to get shot. Then it doesn’t matter how statistically tiny your chances were—you got shot. You weren’t protected by the statistics…in fact, the false sense of security might have been your undoing!
The bottom line is that we need to stop clouding our time, energy, and thoughts with what-if’s. Nothing is certain, and no amount of expert opinion is going to change the countless uncertainties we face as humans every day. We take chances when we get up, when we drive our cars, when we eat a meal, and even when we lay down to sleep. We will all die sometime, whether it’s from a bee sting, shark bite, some form of cancer, drowning, murder, or old age. This world and this life were not meant to be figured out or confined to a formula. We live in a digital age where everything is a 0 or 1, but our lives are analogue.
Regardless of when or how we die, life is much too short for us to be spending countless hours lost in a world of fantasy that is insulated by hypothetical musings and statistics.
“Do you think these guys actually expected to win?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, 9 out of 10 teams who lost the first two games in
the series ended up losing, so I’m thinking they expected defeat.”
“See, I don’t know. Coach Schweitzer has always had a winner’s mentality that you can see in seventeen of his last twenty games.”
“Yes but remember he had a different squad of guys around him this year. If you
look at their mood during the interviews leading up to this game, it seemed like most of them had accepted defeat.”
“Well they didn’t expect for Santa Fe’s star defensive player to get injured in the first two minutes of play either.”
“That’s true too. We all thought he would play a big role in the game, but as we
know it doesn’t take much to change everything.”
“How do you think the team will do next year?”
“If their defense can get back on track and they make some key picks, I think we could see them here next year, no doubt.”
“But if they make bad picks and their defense stays the same they might not have such
a good chance.”
“That’s true too.”
Batman: Impotent Justice
I’ve been a fan of superheroes all my life. As a child I had the action figures and playsets, as a young adult I had some of the comics, and now, almost thirty, I own a large number of DVD’s featuring some of the classics as well as the contemporary animated presentations. I could never understand how or why adults grew out of superheroes…until I saw “Batman: The Dark Knight”. It was then that I realized that many adults lack the naïve idealism and ignorance needed to appreciate and justify the actions of mainstream superheroes. While I appreciated the production values, visual effects, and performances in “Dark Knight”, I found myself leaving the theater with a supreme frustration at the ineffectiveness of what America seems to accept as ideal justice. Looking back, I can see this same impotence permeating the comics and cartoons I used to enjoy, and I now find myself viewing them with spite.
The essence of a superhero, the only thing that supposedly separates him or her from the villains, is their unwillingness to take a life. Time and time again, variations of the cliché, “If you kill them, you’re no better than they are” are uttered whenever a hero comes close to homicide. The result of this belief is a rotating door where the hero puts the villain behind bars, only to have said villain escape later on and unleash more death and carnage before being brought back to “justice”. Then the cycle starts all over again. No matter how many times the villains escape, they are always spared so that they are forced to live with their crimes; “I won’t let you get off that easy”, is yet another cliché used to justify the hero’s refusal to put a true end to the villain’s menace.
In the past, this golly-gosh-gee-darn attitude didn’t come off as weak or unrealistic because the villains were much less malevolent. They captured and kidnapped people instead of killing them, they were melodramatic and colorful, and their schemes were entertaining and creative. The Adam West Batman could be humorous and comical because the Joker and his lax-brained minions were too. At the end of the show, no one got hurt, and the bad guy was thwarted with the promise that he’d return to menace the city again someday. There was no need to kill the villain because he or she did little except annoy the fair people of Gotham.
Almost twenty years ago, Michael Keaton portrayed a version of Batman that was distinctly different than the one people had watched on TV and read about in the comics. He was dark and brutal, able to strike fear into the criminal element of Gotham city. The citizens were no longer “fair”; they were corrupt, vindictive, pessimistic and oppressed. The Joker was a psychopathic gangster who took lives and showed no compassion or any evidence of morality. Batman was still the fisticuffing, Batmobile-riding hero of old, but his mentality was adjusted to his new world. When the Joker took villainy to a new level by killing citizens and working his way to mass murder via chemical terrorism, Batman responded in kind with two attempts to rid Gotham of the Joker for good. He understood that the Joker had bought a large portion of the police, and that taking him to jail would be a waste of time. Added to that was the fact that the Joker was the one who murdered his parents and had yet to atone for that crime. In the end Batman sent the Joker to his death, achieving justice for the lives the Joker stole and freeing the city from fear. When the credits rolled, no one was thinking, “Wow, Batman became just like the Joker. What he did was uncalled for. Batman should have put him in handcuffs and taken him to jail where he would be able to think about his evil deeds”. Batman was not a villain, but he operated outside the confines of the law, and that made the difference.
Keaton’s Batman was more real and gritty than West’s was, but the interpretation only worked because it failed to address the full scope of reality. When Batman nabbed a mugger at the start of the movie, it was just assumed that the criminal eventually wound up behind bars; but without any evidence against him and no authority backing Batman, the alleged mugger wouldn’t have even spent one night in jail. When Batman commanded the other mugger to tell his friends about him, it looked really intimidating and threatening. But if you think about it, what would the mugger say? “There’s a guy in a bat mask who will rough you up if you commit a crime. He’ll turn you over to the police…and they’ll let you go. So we should be scared because we don’t want to get roughed up”.
As much as 1989’s “Batman” brought Gotham and its villains and heroes closer to reality, it still left out the subtle details that would make Batman and his life’s work seem utterly meaningless. “Dark Knight” makes no such omissions.
Early on, Gotham’s justice system is shown to be broken and compromised. Known criminals are released for lack of evidence, or because the people willing to testify against them are slaughtered. The law enforcement is inadequate and corrupt, unable or unwilling to stop the rampant violence that plagues the city. In “Batman Begins”, prosecutors eagerly compromise justice so that they can get a murderer to testify against another, bigger murderer—and they see such a compromise as laudable!
It is this decrepit system that Batman has to rely on to administer justice to the criminals he brings in. He refuses to be an executioner, going out of his way to not to kill murderers and thugs so that he can turn them over to the courts for justice. But the legal system has gaping holes that put the criminals back on the street days after they are incarcerated, making his efforts little more than futile. The fact that he knows this and still persists is more tragic than heroic. It’s entertaining to see him beating people up and using his many gadgets to perform daring deeds, but it all amounts to nothing when all is said and done. The bad guys get injured, a small percentage go to jail for awhile, and the rest go back to business as usual. Meanwhile Bruce gets battered and exhausted and makes very little difference at all.
While Batman’s reliance on a grossly inadequate justice system is more than enough to reveal his ultimate powerlessness, there are three distinct moments in “Dark Knight” that drive the point home even further.
The first moment is when Batman tries to intimidate a high-level thug into giving him information. The thug simply points out the glaring truth that nothing Batman is willing to do will be as bad as what the men the thug is protecting will do if he betrays them. Up until that scene, it was always assumed that Batman was able to threaten and bully criminals into doing what he wanted; their fear of him would make them behave and tell him anything he wanted to know. But the fact is that Batman won’t kill or subject people to any torture that would be considered inhumane. All he can do is talk gruffly, maybe break a few bones, and leave the criminals for the crooked cops to pick up. Any criminal with a brain is going to happily take what Batman gives them instead of risking the wrath of men who will show no mercy.
That one scene, that one moment of realistic defiance is enough to show that Batman is a useless icon. The whole point “Batman Begins” made about Batman becoming a symbol that would terrify evildoers—about him becoming more than a man—is utterly destroyed. He no longer strikes fear into anyone because he cannot do what is necessary to make evil minds cower. His humanity is very apparent, whereas the humanity of his opponents is frighteningly lacking.
But it gets worse.
Near the end of the film, Batman is on his Batcycle headed for a collision with the Joker. The Joker has destroyed property, targeted hospital patients, sadistically taken many lives, shown himself to be without reason or compassion, and placed the city in a state of panic. Batman has a chance to eliminate him, to bring an end to the violence that the madman has stirred up. But at the last minute the would-be hero balks, yanking his cycle off its path and sending himself crashing to the street. For all intents and purposes, the choice he made was to let himself be killed instead of taking the life of a serial killer; had Commissioner Gordon not arrived when he did, Batman would have been slain by the Joker as he laid incapacitated on the asphalt. Perhaps an audience is supposed to find that admirable, but it comes across as absolute foolishness that borders on insanity.
Could you see the eulogy? “Batman was a nice guy who played by the rules. He never took a life, and we admire that. Still…he’s gone now, unable to protect anyone anymore. His nemesis however, is still at large and has killed sixty people since felling our hero. Batman didn’t die for nothing. He died so that a terrorist and murderer might live. We should all be so courageous.”
The final moment that really brings Batman’s inadequacies out is when he is interrogating the Joker at police headquarters. His entrance is intimidating, and he holds nothing back as he pummels the Joker around the room, but his actions are ineffective. Infuriatingly ineffective. It’s hard to get a sense of satisfaction seeing the good guy whoop up on the bad guy when the bad guy is mocking the good guy the whole time. Seeing Batman lose control in fit of helpless fury is very disheartening, as is understanding that the only reason he got the information he wanted was because the Joker wanted to give it to him. The Joker held all the power in that whole scene, and in fact for most of the movie. It takes a far-fetched, impossible, and depressingly laughable demonstration of human decency on a pair of ferries to finally foil the Joker on any level.
Those three moments brought with them painful disillusionment that leveled my respect of the superhero genre. As if they weren’t obvious enough, the final minutes of the film emphasize them with a twist of misguided irony. In the end, it is said that Batman was not a hero—he was what Gotham needed. While it’s true Batman was not a hero, it’s equally true that a hero is exactly what Gotham needed.
A hero is someone who does what it takes to get something done. That might mean a few moments of inconvenience while you stop to help someone change a flat tire, or it might mean throwing yourself over a grenade to protect the rest of your company. In any situation, anything less than what is needed results in something less than heroism. Calling 911 to have an officer change the tire isn’t anything heroic, neither is trying to toss the grenade when you know it’s going to blow before you can release it. Sacrifice is the key to being a true hero, and Batman simply wasn’t willing to make the necessary sacrifices to protect the citizens of Gotham.
The reason Batman cannot do what is necessary is because of a very simplistic and ignorant view of justice. The belief he clings to is that killing someone makes him a villain, but that addresses only one aspect of the action: someone died because of something he did. But there is a considerable difference between killing a murderer to protect other people and killing an innocent person because they looked at you wrong. Bruce Wayne obviously makes no distinction between a stranger holding a knife to someone’s throat and a stranger holding the door open for someone. Killing either of them is wrong, regardless of the fact that one is about to take away another person’s right to live. With his distorted mindset, there is no difference between a soldier and the Joker. They both kill people, after all.
Of course the reality is that there is a difference. Using an enemy’s tactics, ruthlessness and tenacity does not make someone just like their enemy, because their targets, motives, and results are completely different. If Batman kills criminals, he does it to protect innocent people. If he succeeds, people don’t walk the streets in fear and the city prospers. If the Joker kills people, families are torn apart, the city is destroyed, and the survivors fear for their lives. Unless Bruce were to start targeting citizens for some reason, he would never become the Joker, no matter what tactics he uses or how merciless he becomes.
The task Batman took upon himself was to save Gotham from evildoers. To be a hero, he would have had to do whatever it took to save lives. He didn’t. From the moment he let the Joker go, the blood of Rachel, Harvey and everyone else who was killed by the Joker after that moment was on his hands. He had the chance to end evil and he did nothing. The Commissioner too, failed to do his job. He knew how dangerous the Joker was. He knew what the Joker was capable of doing and how impossible it would be to get him convicted in the corrupt court system. Yet he simply arrested him, putting him in the perfect position to destroy headquarters and take even more lives. The cost of being unwilling to take the life of a criminal was the lives of many innocent people.
If someone knows that a killing is going to take place and does nothing, they are considered an accessory to murder because they had an opportunity to stop the event from taking place but they chose to let it happen. Contacting the police with the knowledge that they won’t get there in time is just as bad. In the eyes of the law it might not be considered being an accessory, but the bottom line is that person didn’t do all they could to prevent it.
Maybe a normal person shouldn’t be expected to intervene and prevent the loss of an innocent life at any cost. But a hero certainly should be.
“Batman: The Dark Knight” struck a cord because the reluctance to distribute the ultimate punishment for crimes has had effects in the real world too. Hitler was put in prison for treason in 1923. He was released nine months into a five year sentence, and less than 20 years later launched the world into a war costing millions of lives. Napoleon was defeated and exiled. He escaped and waged another war that spanned five battles, the last one alone costing over 50,000 lives. Those are lives that were needlessly lost because of a notion that killing a dictator would be wrong.
In the year 2000, 129 children in 15 states were molested by criminals who had already been sent to prison for child molestation. That same year in those same states, 6,802 victims were raped by criminals who had already served time for rape. 3,265 people were murdered by felons who had been in prison for murder.
The same mentality that allowed the Joker to continue to take lives and harm innocent people in the fantastic city of Gotham allows the same travesties to happen in real life. The simplistic and idealized concept that playing by a villain’s rules makes the hero become a villain is illogical and harmful, and it makes the forces of good ineffective and powerless.
In the light of reality, Batman is completely impotent. He can not and will not do what it takes to deter crime, to instill terror, to become a symbol that makes criminals cower. The movie itself admitted as much; crime had not dropped since Batman’s appearance. A revolving door, a corrupt court, and an altogether genteel version of crime- fighting ensured that no real lasting good could be done.
When the credits rolled, I found myself perplexed and upset. The Joker had won. He’d shown me that the heroes I grew up admiring, including this new version of Batman, were nothing more than a very weak joke.
The only bright side was that before the movie, I saw a preview for “The Punisher”. It came as no surprise that after “Dark Knight”, I decided I would feel much safer having my city guarded by someone dedicated to the elimination of crime, instead someone who was more concerned with saving the life of the criminals than the lives of my friends and family.
The essence of a superhero, the only thing that supposedly separates him or her from the villains, is their unwillingness to take a life. Time and time again, variations of the cliché, “If you kill them, you’re no better than they are” are uttered whenever a hero comes close to homicide. The result of this belief is a rotating door where the hero puts the villain behind bars, only to have said villain escape later on and unleash more death and carnage before being brought back to “justice”. Then the cycle starts all over again. No matter how many times the villains escape, they are always spared so that they are forced to live with their crimes; “I won’t let you get off that easy”, is yet another cliché used to justify the hero’s refusal to put a true end to the villain’s menace.
In the past, this golly-gosh-gee-darn attitude didn’t come off as weak or unrealistic because the villains were much less malevolent. They captured and kidnapped people instead of killing them, they were melodramatic and colorful, and their schemes were entertaining and creative. The Adam West Batman could be humorous and comical because the Joker and his lax-brained minions were too. At the end of the show, no one got hurt, and the bad guy was thwarted with the promise that he’d return to menace the city again someday. There was no need to kill the villain because he or she did little except annoy the fair people of Gotham.
Almost twenty years ago, Michael Keaton portrayed a version of Batman that was distinctly different than the one people had watched on TV and read about in the comics. He was dark and brutal, able to strike fear into the criminal element of Gotham city. The citizens were no longer “fair”; they were corrupt, vindictive, pessimistic and oppressed. The Joker was a psychopathic gangster who took lives and showed no compassion or any evidence of morality. Batman was still the fisticuffing, Batmobile-riding hero of old, but his mentality was adjusted to his new world. When the Joker took villainy to a new level by killing citizens and working his way to mass murder via chemical terrorism, Batman responded in kind with two attempts to rid Gotham of the Joker for good. He understood that the Joker had bought a large portion of the police, and that taking him to jail would be a waste of time. Added to that was the fact that the Joker was the one who murdered his parents and had yet to atone for that crime. In the end Batman sent the Joker to his death, achieving justice for the lives the Joker stole and freeing the city from fear. When the credits rolled, no one was thinking, “Wow, Batman became just like the Joker. What he did was uncalled for. Batman should have put him in handcuffs and taken him to jail where he would be able to think about his evil deeds”. Batman was not a villain, but he operated outside the confines of the law, and that made the difference.
Keaton’s Batman was more real and gritty than West’s was, but the interpretation only worked because it failed to address the full scope of reality. When Batman nabbed a mugger at the start of the movie, it was just assumed that the criminal eventually wound up behind bars; but without any evidence against him and no authority backing Batman, the alleged mugger wouldn’t have even spent one night in jail. When Batman commanded the other mugger to tell his friends about him, it looked really intimidating and threatening. But if you think about it, what would the mugger say? “There’s a guy in a bat mask who will rough you up if you commit a crime. He’ll turn you over to the police…and they’ll let you go. So we should be scared because we don’t want to get roughed up”.
As much as 1989’s “Batman” brought Gotham and its villains and heroes closer to reality, it still left out the subtle details that would make Batman and his life’s work seem utterly meaningless. “Dark Knight” makes no such omissions.
Early on, Gotham’s justice system is shown to be broken and compromised. Known criminals are released for lack of evidence, or because the people willing to testify against them are slaughtered. The law enforcement is inadequate and corrupt, unable or unwilling to stop the rampant violence that plagues the city. In “Batman Begins”, prosecutors eagerly compromise justice so that they can get a murderer to testify against another, bigger murderer—and they see such a compromise as laudable!
It is this decrepit system that Batman has to rely on to administer justice to the criminals he brings in. He refuses to be an executioner, going out of his way to not to kill murderers and thugs so that he can turn them over to the courts for justice. But the legal system has gaping holes that put the criminals back on the street days after they are incarcerated, making his efforts little more than futile. The fact that he knows this and still persists is more tragic than heroic. It’s entertaining to see him beating people up and using his many gadgets to perform daring deeds, but it all amounts to nothing when all is said and done. The bad guys get injured, a small percentage go to jail for awhile, and the rest go back to business as usual. Meanwhile Bruce gets battered and exhausted and makes very little difference at all.
While Batman’s reliance on a grossly inadequate justice system is more than enough to reveal his ultimate powerlessness, there are three distinct moments in “Dark Knight” that drive the point home even further.
The first moment is when Batman tries to intimidate a high-level thug into giving him information. The thug simply points out the glaring truth that nothing Batman is willing to do will be as bad as what the men the thug is protecting will do if he betrays them. Up until that scene, it was always assumed that Batman was able to threaten and bully criminals into doing what he wanted; their fear of him would make them behave and tell him anything he wanted to know. But the fact is that Batman won’t kill or subject people to any torture that would be considered inhumane. All he can do is talk gruffly, maybe break a few bones, and leave the criminals for the crooked cops to pick up. Any criminal with a brain is going to happily take what Batman gives them instead of risking the wrath of men who will show no mercy.
That one scene, that one moment of realistic defiance is enough to show that Batman is a useless icon. The whole point “Batman Begins” made about Batman becoming a symbol that would terrify evildoers—about him becoming more than a man—is utterly destroyed. He no longer strikes fear into anyone because he cannot do what is necessary to make evil minds cower. His humanity is very apparent, whereas the humanity of his opponents is frighteningly lacking.
But it gets worse.
Near the end of the film, Batman is on his Batcycle headed for a collision with the Joker. The Joker has destroyed property, targeted hospital patients, sadistically taken many lives, shown himself to be without reason or compassion, and placed the city in a state of panic. Batman has a chance to eliminate him, to bring an end to the violence that the madman has stirred up. But at the last minute the would-be hero balks, yanking his cycle off its path and sending himself crashing to the street. For all intents and purposes, the choice he made was to let himself be killed instead of taking the life of a serial killer; had Commissioner Gordon not arrived when he did, Batman would have been slain by the Joker as he laid incapacitated on the asphalt. Perhaps an audience is supposed to find that admirable, but it comes across as absolute foolishness that borders on insanity.
Could you see the eulogy? “Batman was a nice guy who played by the rules. He never took a life, and we admire that. Still…he’s gone now, unable to protect anyone anymore. His nemesis however, is still at large and has killed sixty people since felling our hero. Batman didn’t die for nothing. He died so that a terrorist and murderer might live. We should all be so courageous.”
The final moment that really brings Batman’s inadequacies out is when he is interrogating the Joker at police headquarters. His entrance is intimidating, and he holds nothing back as he pummels the Joker around the room, but his actions are ineffective. Infuriatingly ineffective. It’s hard to get a sense of satisfaction seeing the good guy whoop up on the bad guy when the bad guy is mocking the good guy the whole time. Seeing Batman lose control in fit of helpless fury is very disheartening, as is understanding that the only reason he got the information he wanted was because the Joker wanted to give it to him. The Joker held all the power in that whole scene, and in fact for most of the movie. It takes a far-fetched, impossible, and depressingly laughable demonstration of human decency on a pair of ferries to finally foil the Joker on any level.
Those three moments brought with them painful disillusionment that leveled my respect of the superhero genre. As if they weren’t obvious enough, the final minutes of the film emphasize them with a twist of misguided irony. In the end, it is said that Batman was not a hero—he was what Gotham needed. While it’s true Batman was not a hero, it’s equally true that a hero is exactly what Gotham needed.
A hero is someone who does what it takes to get something done. That might mean a few moments of inconvenience while you stop to help someone change a flat tire, or it might mean throwing yourself over a grenade to protect the rest of your company. In any situation, anything less than what is needed results in something less than heroism. Calling 911 to have an officer change the tire isn’t anything heroic, neither is trying to toss the grenade when you know it’s going to blow before you can release it. Sacrifice is the key to being a true hero, and Batman simply wasn’t willing to make the necessary sacrifices to protect the citizens of Gotham.
The reason Batman cannot do what is necessary is because of a very simplistic and ignorant view of justice. The belief he clings to is that killing someone makes him a villain, but that addresses only one aspect of the action: someone died because of something he did. But there is a considerable difference between killing a murderer to protect other people and killing an innocent person because they looked at you wrong. Bruce Wayne obviously makes no distinction between a stranger holding a knife to someone’s throat and a stranger holding the door open for someone. Killing either of them is wrong, regardless of the fact that one is about to take away another person’s right to live. With his distorted mindset, there is no difference between a soldier and the Joker. They both kill people, after all.
Of course the reality is that there is a difference. Using an enemy’s tactics, ruthlessness and tenacity does not make someone just like their enemy, because their targets, motives, and results are completely different. If Batman kills criminals, he does it to protect innocent people. If he succeeds, people don’t walk the streets in fear and the city prospers. If the Joker kills people, families are torn apart, the city is destroyed, and the survivors fear for their lives. Unless Bruce were to start targeting citizens for some reason, he would never become the Joker, no matter what tactics he uses or how merciless he becomes.
The task Batman took upon himself was to save Gotham from evildoers. To be a hero, he would have had to do whatever it took to save lives. He didn’t. From the moment he let the Joker go, the blood of Rachel, Harvey and everyone else who was killed by the Joker after that moment was on his hands. He had the chance to end evil and he did nothing. The Commissioner too, failed to do his job. He knew how dangerous the Joker was. He knew what the Joker was capable of doing and how impossible it would be to get him convicted in the corrupt court system. Yet he simply arrested him, putting him in the perfect position to destroy headquarters and take even more lives. The cost of being unwilling to take the life of a criminal was the lives of many innocent people.
If someone knows that a killing is going to take place and does nothing, they are considered an accessory to murder because they had an opportunity to stop the event from taking place but they chose to let it happen. Contacting the police with the knowledge that they won’t get there in time is just as bad. In the eyes of the law it might not be considered being an accessory, but the bottom line is that person didn’t do all they could to prevent it.
Maybe a normal person shouldn’t be expected to intervene and prevent the loss of an innocent life at any cost. But a hero certainly should be.
“Batman: The Dark Knight” struck a cord because the reluctance to distribute the ultimate punishment for crimes has had effects in the real world too. Hitler was put in prison for treason in 1923. He was released nine months into a five year sentence, and less than 20 years later launched the world into a war costing millions of lives. Napoleon was defeated and exiled. He escaped and waged another war that spanned five battles, the last one alone costing over 50,000 lives. Those are lives that were needlessly lost because of a notion that killing a dictator would be wrong.
In the year 2000, 129 children in 15 states were molested by criminals who had already been sent to prison for child molestation. That same year in those same states, 6,802 victims were raped by criminals who had already served time for rape. 3,265 people were murdered by felons who had been in prison for murder.
The same mentality that allowed the Joker to continue to take lives and harm innocent people in the fantastic city of Gotham allows the same travesties to happen in real life. The simplistic and idealized concept that playing by a villain’s rules makes the hero become a villain is illogical and harmful, and it makes the forces of good ineffective and powerless.
In the light of reality, Batman is completely impotent. He can not and will not do what it takes to deter crime, to instill terror, to become a symbol that makes criminals cower. The movie itself admitted as much; crime had not dropped since Batman’s appearance. A revolving door, a corrupt court, and an altogether genteel version of crime- fighting ensured that no real lasting good could be done.
When the credits rolled, I found myself perplexed and upset. The Joker had won. He’d shown me that the heroes I grew up admiring, including this new version of Batman, were nothing more than a very weak joke.
The only bright side was that before the movie, I saw a preview for “The Punisher”. It came as no surprise that after “Dark Knight”, I decided I would feel much safer having my city guarded by someone dedicated to the elimination of crime, instead someone who was more concerned with saving the life of the criminals than the lives of my friends and family.
Failing to Strike Gold on the Silver Screen
Whether it’s out of casual curiosity or professional concern, many people have been wondering why the box office numbers have been so low—particularly in the past few years. While DVD revenue has gone up considerably, the turnouts in theaters have dwindled. There are a couple of reasons that are cited most often as being the primary causes for poor turnouts, but they are faulty at best; at worst they intentionally misdirect responsibility away from Hollywood and towards the consumer. I believe there are three main factors that have contributed to the decline of cinematic popularity, and all of them originate with the folks bringing films to the masses.
Before I delve into those factors, I want to dispel the current hypotheses circulating in pertinence to low box office numbers. The three main reasons I hear are: tedious advertising before the movie, higher ticket prices, and the fact that more and more people are buying home theater systems.
When I walk out of the theater after a truly fantastic movie, I’m usually too floored to say much, but when I do, I’m talking about what made that movie great. I’m discussing the acting, the cinematography, the plot twists, and the unique moments the movie presented. Most of the folks I go see it with react in a similar—if not as eccentric—manner. At the very least, no one says, “I can’t believe it cost nine bucks to see that!” No one mentions the commercials or ads that took up twenty minutes of our time prior to the feature presentation.
The opposite is true after a bad film. Most of the time I’m just bitterly peeved that I had to endure the last sixty minutes of a failure simply because of my monetary and temporal investment in it. Other than a few laughs at the blaring shortcomings and the chance of an easy segue with a difficult date, the movie has been a complete waste. It is at the end of said bad movie that the complaints about admission costs abound. At that point we start complaining about the commute to the theater, the gas prices, and even the time it took to get ready! Most everyone is a little more disenchanted with movies in general, and many are reluctant to endure the same torment the following weekend.
Simply put, the rising cost of admission and the twenty minutes of shameless advertising are quickly forgotten (and maybe forgiven) when they lend to a pleasurable entertainment experience. But when you endure the hardships only to be greeted with a silver screen debauchery, you have no choice but to feel pillaged.
The other excuse given for poor turnouts is that folks are buying home theater systems and watching the films at home. I find this to be a weak argument for two reasons. First, people don’t wait for good things in general—movies are no exception. If there’s a great film out, people aren’t going to wait eight months for the DVD release so they can watch it at home. Second, I’ve worked retail in the electronics world before, and while the cost of a home theater has become much more affordable in the past few years, it is by no means cheap. The average family has a very difficult time managing to buy a quality, five-point-surround-sound-system, let alone a large television and a room that will effectively maximize the sound and picture. Suffice to say, even those who can afford the best a Circuit City or Best Buy has to offer will not begin to approach the atmosphere or scale of a commercial stadium-seated movie theater.
The cinema gives you an experience that only a few very wealthy folks can afford to put in their living rooms. More people might be buying surround sound and bigger TV’s, but in no way can those systems hold a candle to what a true theater is capable of.
Now that I’ve said what isn’t the cause for the Hollywood slump, let me offer three reasons that are large contributors: failing star power, poor content, and money.
Once upon a time, stars in Hollywood were wondrous enigmas. They were recognizable faces portraying our favorite heroes or villains, and they embodied the characteristics of the characters they played. Their lives off-screen were a glamorous mix of rumors, gossip, and dashing public appearances. There were biographies and news articles about them, but there wasn’t a steady flow of coverage about their lives. Apart from a few incidents of controversy or illegal acts, they seemed to be almost another class of human. Their celebrity status set them apart from the audience, which allowed them to be truly believed in their roles while also being separated from them.
In past years, however, star perception has taken a turn for the worse. Because of the internet, the paparazzi, and an insatiable news media, audiences know more about their stars than they ever wanted to. While the celebrity status still exists, it’s not automatically granted, as much as it is hyped by publicity and willingly offered by fans. Stars are no longer mysterious and aloof—they are people just like everyone else with similar problems—albeit generally with more money. The ability of a star to be distanced from his/her off-screen persona is dying out. Tom Cruise is a good example.
An A-List actor for over a decade, Tom was blasted because of his off-screen antics and zealous support for scientology. I’m not sure how wide-spread the boycott was, but I knew a number of people who refused to see War of the Worlds simply because he was in it! They didn’t like him as a person, and they couldn’t separate him from his character.
The biggest example I saw was when Doug Liman, director of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, said he was hesitant to put some of the more racy scenes in the movie because of the news and rumors about Brad, Angelina, and Jennifer. Accusations of adultery were flying through the air, and he feared it might look bad if Brad and Angelina shared some believably intimate scenes. It was absurd! Why should a director have to worry about his actors’ personal lives when making a creative decision? If it works in the film, use it! If it makes the film better, or adds to the depth of the characters, put it in! A film should not be dictated by the lives of its participants, and Liman shouldn’t have questioned his content because of factors that had no bearing on the story.
Fortunately, he kept the scenes in, but it’s still sad that he had to think about it. There is a disenchantment taking place in how the public views Hollywood. Stars aren’t commanding the audiences they used to (and in some cases they are actually driving audiences away), but the producers don’t notice that. They still fork out $15 for an A-List actor, toss them into a faulty plot with some CGI effects and expect to make money. But that actor isn’t drawing $15 million in ticket sales anymore, and that will continue to be the case. Audiences are getting smarter, and with so many films to choose from, they are going to pick the ones made from quality as opposed those fabricated by celebrity and eye candy.
I’ve briefly touched on the second point already; that Hollywood has a serious content problem. The foundation of a good film is a good story, so why is it that so many films lack a decent plot—if they even have one at all? Just look at some of the more recent movies that found some success at the box office: King Kong, Ray, Walk the Line, The Passion, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Identity. What do they have in common? The stories were written for them already! They were either biographies or novels that were written and adapted for the screen. Comic book films have become popular lately as well, and while those required some plot construction, the premises, characters, and basic angles of the stories were created by someone else decades ago. I know there’s supposedly nothing new under the sun, but come on! Why do we see the same regurgitated material with different actors?
The misuse of technology is one of the biggest reasons for this. From talking pictures to Technicolor to CGI, every time there is a true technological advance in cinema every film company jumps on board and tries to get their finger in the pie. When Star Wars hit theaters in ’77, it introduced the next stage of special effects and lead to the creation of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Many movies that came after that were essentially showcases for the new brand of special effects with only the faintest of storylines to hold them together. The same thing happened after The Matrix came out. It took the computer effects that films like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park pioneered and brought them to the next level. So what happened? We immediately saw a rash of Matrix clones and a subsequent outbreak of films that took advantage of the new frontier without forging a coherent through-line to get them to the end of it. It’s almost as if producers find an effect they want to use and then look for a story to build around it. …And it shows.
Tradition is the other big factor that contributes to stagnant material. There is a set standard for how to write a script. According to Hollywood, every script needs to have certain plot points (exposition, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, resolution, etc..,) and be a certain length depending on the genre. It’s a formula—a formula that guarantees repetition, predictability and limitation. In order to compensate for this, the writers need plot devices and twists to make it interesting. Some of these appeal to immediate gratification, (cheap laughs, nudity, big explosions, pointless car chases, shock-value-graphic violence) while others are simply far-fetched and disjointed solutions and scenarios that result in an empty feeling after the film is done. In addition, scripts must be a held to a certain length because apparently we as an audience don’t have the intelligence or attention-span to follow a more involved story. Now there are exceptions to these limitations (Braveheart, Titanic, The Empire Strikes Back, Lord of the Rings) and for the most part they have been successful.
Scripts that don’t have plot points in the right places or venture off the well-worn path of predictability rarely see the light of day; many of the ones that do are independent or “artistic” films that find limited exposure. This creates a polarized effect. Instead of having a solid, relatable film with a fresh perspective, you have your choice of either tasteless mediocrity, or incomprehensible art.
The reason that studios look to comfortable formulas is also the third reason why Hollywood is failing in general: money. Movies are a part of show business; you can’t have the “show” without the “business”. I understand this. The problem is that Hollywood has allowed itself to become so inefficient and greedy that it needs a lot more money to stay in business. Not only that, but money has become the focus. Films are nothing more than sources of income; it doesn’t matter what’s inside as long as it sells. Sequels are a good example of this. Why are sequels rarely as good as the original? Because the original was the telling of a good story that happened to resonate with a lot of people. The sequel was simply taking recognizable elements from the original and trying to concoct a plot around them. It’s the same principle as star-power. The people who see movies are no longer considered an “audience”…they are a “market”. And if there is a market for an actor or a character, Hollywood packages the product and ships it out as soon as possible.
The market has to be big enough to cover the costs of the movie, so the film has to appeal to the largest denominator. This means that, as a market, we won’t see but so much deviation from the basic formulas. The product can’t be too specialized because not as many people will buy it. The problem is that oftentimes the specialized products are the better ones. Instead of having an average film that gets moderate reception from one million people, Hollywood could make an exceptional film that has a tremendous impact on 500,000 people and alienates 500,000 people.
Look at The Passion. That was a very specialized work that was guaranteed to be accepted and appreciated by a certain group of people and discarded and criticized by another group of people. Fortunately for Mel Gibson, the group of people impacted by the film was large enough to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales. But Gibson had to invest his own money to get the project done; Hollywood wasn’t about to take that chance.
Hollywood’s need to find mass appeal is the main reason we see so many humdrum presentations, and the reason Hollywood needs to make so much money is to cover its astronomical expenses. Many of the films out there cost well over $100 million to make, which means that the studios need to make $100 million-plus to be successful. Why are films so expensive? It’s Hollywood!
As I already mentioned, a good A-list actor will cost $15 million right off the bat. Anyone with name-recognition is going to command well over a million dollars as well, and the basic rate for even an extra is hundreds of dollars a day—plus expenses. Unions ruin the system as well. Just as in every other market, they jack up the base rates for everyone from the director to the grips (the guys that run around duct taping things and fetching coffee). In addition to ridiculous rates, the unions also create an artificially selective market. There are hundreds of thousands of actors and laborers who would gladly work on a film for next to nothing, but they can’t get in the door because of the Catch-22 of labor unions; you have to be involved in two big productions to be eligible for the union, but to work on two big productions you have to already be a part of the union. There are some ways to get around this, but, as usual, it’s mostly about who you know. –And if you think about it, “Who you know” doesn’t exactly guarantee quality or competence…which explains even more why the system is generating so much garbage.
Another huge expense is simply the vast number of people involved in a film. Have you watched the credits? There are countless names and titles involved in something that lasted only two hours! I’ve worked on sets before and I know that there is a need for a lot of those people. To get a great finished product, you need every detail to be great as well, and that means specialized talent. But why do you need to pay a grip thirty dollars an hour to hold a filter when there’s a perfectly good actor loafing in his trailer? He’s got two arms doesn’t he? You’re telling me he doesn’t have the skills needed to hold a filter in a specific place during a take? Or is it simply that Hollywood has constructed an artificial hierarchy and status ladder that separates the people working on a film from the people merely appearing in a film?
Now, it may seem like having more people on the set would decrease the time and difficulty of shooting a scene, but it’s actually just the opposite. More people means more schedules to coordinate, more time to communicate ideas, more provisions, more space, more time to set-up and tear-down, and far more confusion in general.
There are plenty more extraneous costs that go into making a film that I won’t go into. Normally it wouldn’t matter to me at all what a studio pays to get a film produced, but when all the unnecessary costs mean that the movie has to make a fortune for the studio to just break even, and that in turn means that I’m going to be subjected to a lackluster product that is trying to cater to everyone in the country so the studio can get their money, then yes, it matters to me.
Hollywood has become like the folks who predict the weather: they get it right about 10% of the time and the rest is just a waste.
Movies will continue to endure, if for no other reason than increasing DVD sales. Casually watching a mediocre movie in the comfort of your own home isn’t half as bad as going to a theater with the expectation of a great experience. People buy movies for a collection or as gifts, and with companies like Netflix it only costs a buck to see what (if anything) you’ve been missing. Hollywood needs to stop pointing at audiences and start looking to their products for the reasons behind the decline in ticket sales. Where are the good, original stories of our time? Hollywood has none, so they decide to turn to controversial issues, politics, and regurgitated comedies to put people in theaters.
There needs to be a change, and there will be. If the studio executives don’t recognize the shift, they will be replaced by visionaries who understand and relate to the audiences they are trying to reach. But make no mistake. The cause of Hollywood’s fall is not home theaters or higher ticket prices. The cause is the combination of saturated politics, artists who got where they are because of who they know, and a misplaced emphasis on “stars” who are quickly falling to earth and taking movie sales with them.
Before I delve into those factors, I want to dispel the current hypotheses circulating in pertinence to low box office numbers. The three main reasons I hear are: tedious advertising before the movie, higher ticket prices, and the fact that more and more people are buying home theater systems.
When I walk out of the theater after a truly fantastic movie, I’m usually too floored to say much, but when I do, I’m talking about what made that movie great. I’m discussing the acting, the cinematography, the plot twists, and the unique moments the movie presented. Most of the folks I go see it with react in a similar—if not as eccentric—manner. At the very least, no one says, “I can’t believe it cost nine bucks to see that!” No one mentions the commercials or ads that took up twenty minutes of our time prior to the feature presentation.
The opposite is true after a bad film. Most of the time I’m just bitterly peeved that I had to endure the last sixty minutes of a failure simply because of my monetary and temporal investment in it. Other than a few laughs at the blaring shortcomings and the chance of an easy segue with a difficult date, the movie has been a complete waste. It is at the end of said bad movie that the complaints about admission costs abound. At that point we start complaining about the commute to the theater, the gas prices, and even the time it took to get ready! Most everyone is a little more disenchanted with movies in general, and many are reluctant to endure the same torment the following weekend.
Simply put, the rising cost of admission and the twenty minutes of shameless advertising are quickly forgotten (and maybe forgiven) when they lend to a pleasurable entertainment experience. But when you endure the hardships only to be greeted with a silver screen debauchery, you have no choice but to feel pillaged.
The other excuse given for poor turnouts is that folks are buying home theater systems and watching the films at home. I find this to be a weak argument for two reasons. First, people don’t wait for good things in general—movies are no exception. If there’s a great film out, people aren’t going to wait eight months for the DVD release so they can watch it at home. Second, I’ve worked retail in the electronics world before, and while the cost of a home theater has become much more affordable in the past few years, it is by no means cheap. The average family has a very difficult time managing to buy a quality, five-point-surround-sound-system, let alone a large television and a room that will effectively maximize the sound and picture. Suffice to say, even those who can afford the best a Circuit City or Best Buy has to offer will not begin to approach the atmosphere or scale of a commercial stadium-seated movie theater.
The cinema gives you an experience that only a few very wealthy folks can afford to put in their living rooms. More people might be buying surround sound and bigger TV’s, but in no way can those systems hold a candle to what a true theater is capable of.
Now that I’ve said what isn’t the cause for the Hollywood slump, let me offer three reasons that are large contributors: failing star power, poor content, and money.
Once upon a time, stars in Hollywood were wondrous enigmas. They were recognizable faces portraying our favorite heroes or villains, and they embodied the characteristics of the characters they played. Their lives off-screen were a glamorous mix of rumors, gossip, and dashing public appearances. There were biographies and news articles about them, but there wasn’t a steady flow of coverage about their lives. Apart from a few incidents of controversy or illegal acts, they seemed to be almost another class of human. Their celebrity status set them apart from the audience, which allowed them to be truly believed in their roles while also being separated from them.
In past years, however, star perception has taken a turn for the worse. Because of the internet, the paparazzi, and an insatiable news media, audiences know more about their stars than they ever wanted to. While the celebrity status still exists, it’s not automatically granted, as much as it is hyped by publicity and willingly offered by fans. Stars are no longer mysterious and aloof—they are people just like everyone else with similar problems—albeit generally with more money. The ability of a star to be distanced from his/her off-screen persona is dying out. Tom Cruise is a good example.
An A-List actor for over a decade, Tom was blasted because of his off-screen antics and zealous support for scientology. I’m not sure how wide-spread the boycott was, but I knew a number of people who refused to see War of the Worlds simply because he was in it! They didn’t like him as a person, and they couldn’t separate him from his character.
The biggest example I saw was when Doug Liman, director of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, said he was hesitant to put some of the more racy scenes in the movie because of the news and rumors about Brad, Angelina, and Jennifer. Accusations of adultery were flying through the air, and he feared it might look bad if Brad and Angelina shared some believably intimate scenes. It was absurd! Why should a director have to worry about his actors’ personal lives when making a creative decision? If it works in the film, use it! If it makes the film better, or adds to the depth of the characters, put it in! A film should not be dictated by the lives of its participants, and Liman shouldn’t have questioned his content because of factors that had no bearing on the story.
Fortunately, he kept the scenes in, but it’s still sad that he had to think about it. There is a disenchantment taking place in how the public views Hollywood. Stars aren’t commanding the audiences they used to (and in some cases they are actually driving audiences away), but the producers don’t notice that. They still fork out $15 for an A-List actor, toss them into a faulty plot with some CGI effects and expect to make money. But that actor isn’t drawing $15 million in ticket sales anymore, and that will continue to be the case. Audiences are getting smarter, and with so many films to choose from, they are going to pick the ones made from quality as opposed those fabricated by celebrity and eye candy.
I’ve briefly touched on the second point already; that Hollywood has a serious content problem. The foundation of a good film is a good story, so why is it that so many films lack a decent plot—if they even have one at all? Just look at some of the more recent movies that found some success at the box office: King Kong, Ray, Walk the Line, The Passion, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Identity. What do they have in common? The stories were written for them already! They were either biographies or novels that were written and adapted for the screen. Comic book films have become popular lately as well, and while those required some plot construction, the premises, characters, and basic angles of the stories were created by someone else decades ago. I know there’s supposedly nothing new under the sun, but come on! Why do we see the same regurgitated material with different actors?
The misuse of technology is one of the biggest reasons for this. From talking pictures to Technicolor to CGI, every time there is a true technological advance in cinema every film company jumps on board and tries to get their finger in the pie. When Star Wars hit theaters in ’77, it introduced the next stage of special effects and lead to the creation of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Many movies that came after that were essentially showcases for the new brand of special effects with only the faintest of storylines to hold them together. The same thing happened after The Matrix came out. It took the computer effects that films like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park pioneered and brought them to the next level. So what happened? We immediately saw a rash of Matrix clones and a subsequent outbreak of films that took advantage of the new frontier without forging a coherent through-line to get them to the end of it. It’s almost as if producers find an effect they want to use and then look for a story to build around it. …And it shows.
Tradition is the other big factor that contributes to stagnant material. There is a set standard for how to write a script. According to Hollywood, every script needs to have certain plot points (exposition, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, resolution, etc..,) and be a certain length depending on the genre. It’s a formula—a formula that guarantees repetition, predictability and limitation. In order to compensate for this, the writers need plot devices and twists to make it interesting. Some of these appeal to immediate gratification, (cheap laughs, nudity, big explosions, pointless car chases, shock-value-graphic violence) while others are simply far-fetched and disjointed solutions and scenarios that result in an empty feeling after the film is done. In addition, scripts must be a held to a certain length because apparently we as an audience don’t have the intelligence or attention-span to follow a more involved story. Now there are exceptions to these limitations (Braveheart, Titanic, The Empire Strikes Back, Lord of the Rings) and for the most part they have been successful.
Scripts that don’t have plot points in the right places or venture off the well-worn path of predictability rarely see the light of day; many of the ones that do are independent or “artistic” films that find limited exposure. This creates a polarized effect. Instead of having a solid, relatable film with a fresh perspective, you have your choice of either tasteless mediocrity, or incomprehensible art.
The reason that studios look to comfortable formulas is also the third reason why Hollywood is failing in general: money. Movies are a part of show business; you can’t have the “show” without the “business”. I understand this. The problem is that Hollywood has allowed itself to become so inefficient and greedy that it needs a lot more money to stay in business. Not only that, but money has become the focus. Films are nothing more than sources of income; it doesn’t matter what’s inside as long as it sells. Sequels are a good example of this. Why are sequels rarely as good as the original? Because the original was the telling of a good story that happened to resonate with a lot of people. The sequel was simply taking recognizable elements from the original and trying to concoct a plot around them. It’s the same principle as star-power. The people who see movies are no longer considered an “audience”…they are a “market”. And if there is a market for an actor or a character, Hollywood packages the product and ships it out as soon as possible.
The market has to be big enough to cover the costs of the movie, so the film has to appeal to the largest denominator. This means that, as a market, we won’t see but so much deviation from the basic formulas. The product can’t be too specialized because not as many people will buy it. The problem is that oftentimes the specialized products are the better ones. Instead of having an average film that gets moderate reception from one million people, Hollywood could make an exceptional film that has a tremendous impact on 500,000 people and alienates 500,000 people.
Look at The Passion. That was a very specialized work that was guaranteed to be accepted and appreciated by a certain group of people and discarded and criticized by another group of people. Fortunately for Mel Gibson, the group of people impacted by the film was large enough to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales. But Gibson had to invest his own money to get the project done; Hollywood wasn’t about to take that chance.
Hollywood’s need to find mass appeal is the main reason we see so many humdrum presentations, and the reason Hollywood needs to make so much money is to cover its astronomical expenses. Many of the films out there cost well over $100 million to make, which means that the studios need to make $100 million-plus to be successful. Why are films so expensive? It’s Hollywood!
As I already mentioned, a good A-list actor will cost $15 million right off the bat. Anyone with name-recognition is going to command well over a million dollars as well, and the basic rate for even an extra is hundreds of dollars a day—plus expenses. Unions ruin the system as well. Just as in every other market, they jack up the base rates for everyone from the director to the grips (the guys that run around duct taping things and fetching coffee). In addition to ridiculous rates, the unions also create an artificially selective market. There are hundreds of thousands of actors and laborers who would gladly work on a film for next to nothing, but they can’t get in the door because of the Catch-22 of labor unions; you have to be involved in two big productions to be eligible for the union, but to work on two big productions you have to already be a part of the union. There are some ways to get around this, but, as usual, it’s mostly about who you know. –And if you think about it, “Who you know” doesn’t exactly guarantee quality or competence…which explains even more why the system is generating so much garbage.
Another huge expense is simply the vast number of people involved in a film. Have you watched the credits? There are countless names and titles involved in something that lasted only two hours! I’ve worked on sets before and I know that there is a need for a lot of those people. To get a great finished product, you need every detail to be great as well, and that means specialized talent. But why do you need to pay a grip thirty dollars an hour to hold a filter when there’s a perfectly good actor loafing in his trailer? He’s got two arms doesn’t he? You’re telling me he doesn’t have the skills needed to hold a filter in a specific place during a take? Or is it simply that Hollywood has constructed an artificial hierarchy and status ladder that separates the people working on a film from the people merely appearing in a film?
Now, it may seem like having more people on the set would decrease the time and difficulty of shooting a scene, but it’s actually just the opposite. More people means more schedules to coordinate, more time to communicate ideas, more provisions, more space, more time to set-up and tear-down, and far more confusion in general.
There are plenty more extraneous costs that go into making a film that I won’t go into. Normally it wouldn’t matter to me at all what a studio pays to get a film produced, but when all the unnecessary costs mean that the movie has to make a fortune for the studio to just break even, and that in turn means that I’m going to be subjected to a lackluster product that is trying to cater to everyone in the country so the studio can get their money, then yes, it matters to me.
Hollywood has become like the folks who predict the weather: they get it right about 10% of the time and the rest is just a waste.
Movies will continue to endure, if for no other reason than increasing DVD sales. Casually watching a mediocre movie in the comfort of your own home isn’t half as bad as going to a theater with the expectation of a great experience. People buy movies for a collection or as gifts, and with companies like Netflix it only costs a buck to see what (if anything) you’ve been missing. Hollywood needs to stop pointing at audiences and start looking to their products for the reasons behind the decline in ticket sales. Where are the good, original stories of our time? Hollywood has none, so they decide to turn to controversial issues, politics, and regurgitated comedies to put people in theaters.
There needs to be a change, and there will be. If the studio executives don’t recognize the shift, they will be replaced by visionaries who understand and relate to the audiences they are trying to reach. But make no mistake. The cause of Hollywood’s fall is not home theaters or higher ticket prices. The cause is the combination of saturated politics, artists who got where they are because of who they know, and a misplaced emphasis on “stars” who are quickly falling to earth and taking movie sales with them.
Sports: Violation of Pure Competion
When I was five years old I saw The Karate Kid, and I vividly remember the final fight between Daniel-san and Johnny during the martial arts tournament. The Sensei for the Cobra Kai has one of his pupils perform an illegal move on Daniel’s leg that gets the pupil ejected and almost ends Daniel’s bid for the trophy. Later, the Sensei tells a bloody-nosed Johnny to “sweep the leg”, a move that would result in Johnny losing a point in the match. Johnny obeys, re-injuring Daniel’s leg and nearly putting him out of commission for good.
I always thought Johnny was a jerk and a coward for attacking Daniel’s injured leg; it was low, dirty and dishonorable, not to mention illegal. I used to think that all good people in the free world would agree with me, but recently I have discovered that is not the case.
It seems that in the sporting arena, such an act is not perceived as wicked, but rather as gamesman-like and smart. If a sport commentator today were to be watching that fateful match, I believe he would say something like this:
“I can’t believe it! Johnny has just swept the leg from under Daniel—the same leg that was injured earlier! Daniel is down and it looks like he could be out of this fight for good. John Crease, the Sensei of the Cobra Kai, is looking on with a grim smile. This aggressive and illegal move will cost Johnny a point, but if Daniel can’t continue then Johnny wins by default. It’s smart play-calling on Crease’s part. He weighed the pros and cons and went with the call that would be most likely to net him a win. …What a gamesman!”
That might sound ludicrous, but the same perversion has poisoned the minds of sports commentators and fans alike. The line between good and bad is being rubbed out for the sake of justifying a victory. Phrases like “Winning isn’t everything” and “May the best man win” are being replaced with “A win is a win” and “Do whatever it takes to get the job done”. “Just do your best” has become a cliché that no one really seems to believe anymore. People no longer compete to see who is better, they compete to win. Despite what you might think, the two goals are far from similar.
I watched a football game the other night between the Steelers and the Dolphins. On one play, the Steelers busted out with an 82-yard pass play that gave them a touchdown and put them in the lead. The only problem was the Steelers’ receiver stepped out of bounds. The refs didn’t catch it, but the coach of the Dolphins did. He threw the red flag to challenge the play but the refs didn’t see that either. The coach for the Steelers knew what was about to happen so he had his kicking crew hurry out on the field and get the extra point over with so that the red flag would become a moot point. He succeeded.
Some people say that was smart football. Some people say that he made the right call, the call that any coach would make. The truth is, he was a coward and showed none of the qualities of a true competitor. He knew the rules had been broken, that his receiver had stepped out of bounds and that the play should have been blown dead. He knew the touchdown was illegitimate and yet he did everything he could to make sure he would get away with it anyway. It was sneaky and underhanded and not at all within the scope of the game of football. He was playing for the “W”, not to prove that his Steelers were better than the Dolphins.
The purpose of competition is not simply to declare a victor, nor does a true competitor simply compete to win. A true competitor wants to pit his best against someone else’s best and see how he matches up. He wants to take all his skills, abilities, talents, experiences and knowledge, and see if he is better than his peers. A competitor plays to compete, not to win.
Wars are fought to win. Nations at war do not want to compete to see who is better; they want to preserve their borders, their way of life, or their freedom. All is fair in war because there can be no rules. After all it’s hard to make rules when killing someone is not only allowed, it’s the whole point! Human life becomes secondary to the cause for which the soldiers are fighting, and when that happens there is nothing that is forbidden. Victory is not achieved by reaching a certain amount of kills, nor is it defined within a certain amount of time. Victory comes only when the enemy can no longer oppose you and must surrender or become extinct. Casualties and destruction mean nothing because winning means everything.
Sports are not wars. The absolute and extreme measures that are taken in war to secure victory cannot and should not be allowed in competition. If you cannot beat a team within the rules and regulations laid out by the sport, then you do not deserve to win.
I always found it peculiar that people would say, “May the best man win” until I realized that the best man does not always win. The heart of a true competitor wants the best to win, regardless of who it is. Why? Well, if he is the best, he wants to be able to claim victory, not have it ripped out of his hands by the devious devices of his opponents. On the other hand, if he is not the best, he doesn’t want to take what is not his. Pure competition is designed to praise the achievements and efforts of a superior competitor, not someone who was able to manipulate and sneak more points on the scoreboard.
People who break the rules or knowingly commit fouls only prove that they are inferior to their opponents. It shows that they cannot win on their own merits—they are not the better athletes. In order to win, or to give the illusion that they are better, they must step outside the parameters set by the sport to give themselves an advantage. The Steelers might well have been better than the Dolphins, but the fact that the coach would exploit a missed call shows that he did not have confidence that his team could win, or even to make another big play like that. If he did, if he truly believed his team was better, he would have acknowledged the foul and then marched down the field on the next play.
The most fun I ever had playing basketball was with a very competitive friend of mine from high school. We were almost even in terms of skill, so our games were not only close but they were extremely intense. There was a certain amount of pride on the line as to who had improved more since the last time we played, and who would be one-up the next time we played. But what really made the competition work was the honesty we had. I remember one play in particular where I was on defense and I had managed to back him into a corner. He couldn’t dribble and he had no open shot. He took a step back and launched a prayer right over my hands that swished through the net. I got the rebound and tossed him the ball. He tossed it back and said, “My foot was out of bounds”.
He wanted to win, but it was more important to him that he won fairly with his own abilities. That foot out of bounds had given him the space he needed to foil my defense, but it was a foot he shouldn’t have had. I didn’t notice, but he knew. He went on to win that game, and he left the court a true winner. We each had played our best, and he had proven the better man fair and square. Had he kept quiet and taken the point, he wouldn’t have known if he really could have beaten me that game. I don’t know how anyone can walk off a court or field with any kind of pride knowing that they won because they got away with something illegal, or because they were able to manipulate the system.
If the roles in The Karate Kid had been reversed for the final bout, would we still have been able to root for Daniel? Despite the fact that he was the underdog and a good kid in general, would we have been okay with him fighting dirty to win?
There are three kinds of rules in sports. The first kind of rules establish the technical aspects of the game: field size, objectives, point system, etc.., The second kind of rules are created to protect the health or well-being of the players with safety in mind. The third set of rules make sure that all factors outside the competitors are as equal as possible so that they can truly test their abilities against each other.
A receiver needs to be able to run a good route, have great speed, agility, dexterity, and field-awareness. He must have endurance and stamina to run several plays in a row at full speed, and he needs to have good hands and presence of mind. The same list of qualities is needed by his direct nemesis, the cornerback. The rules are designed to make sure those qualities are tested, and that the speed, agility, etc.., of each player are pitted against the other.
For example, a cornerback cannot make contact with a receiver after five yards. Why? Because if a cornerback could wrestle, bump, and grapple with the receiver, it wouldn’t be a match of speed and agility but of upper body strength; they would essentially become lineman.
A lineman cannot hold his opponent. Why? Because the battle on the line is a match of balance, power, and strength. The offensive lineman wants to hit low, hard, and fast to knock the defender off-balance and take control of the battle. There is technique involved in blocking and pass-rushing that would be completely discarded if all the lineman had to do was tackle his opponent or cling desperately onto his jersey until the play was over.
When a lineman holds, it shows that he was beaten. For whatever reason, his opponent was able to gain the upper hand and the only way the lineman can compensate is to cheat. Again, the competition is over and the other man was better. But if the lineman can get away with the hold, he might very well buy his quarterback enough time to get the pass off and score a touchdown; the end result therefore was not an accurate depiction of which team was the more skilled on that particular play.
The rules create the necessary grounds of competition. They set the parameters of what skills and talents someone must have to be good at any given position. Just like the rules define what it takes to be a good sprinter or swimmer in the Olympics, so too do they define what makes a superior lineman or receiver. When the rules are broken, the guidelines are destroyed and the value of competition is gone. If all you have to do is be able to get away with holding, then any scrub of any size and skill could be a lineman—all he’d have to do is get hold of his opponent in a way the ref couldn’t see and hold on for dear life.
Rules are also designed as checks and balances to make sure no one has an advantage going into the match-up. There are reasons the offensive line cannot move prior to the snap but the defensive line can. The rules are not random requisites thrown out there by the creators of the sport just to make things difficult. There is a reason for each one of them, and they have to be specific because there has to be as little subjectivity as possible. A toe out of bounds might not really give a receiver that much of an advantage, but how else would you enforce the boundaries with any consistency other than to say both feet must be completely in bounds?
Once general rules define how the game is played, it is absolutely necessary to make sure that the definition of the game is followed faithfully so that it can birth a competitive atmosphere. If kicking was allowed in basketball, the sport would not only be chaotic, but it would become difficult to determine who really had more skill and in what areas. Offense would be nearly impossible, and defense would be far too easy. It would be a mismatch almost all the time and no one could really claim to have a better mastery of the sport. Once dribbling was established as the only way to move with the ball, there had to be rules that put boundaries on what the defense could and couldn’t do to interfere with that movement. Those rules defined what it took to be a great defender as well as what made a good dribbler. Any time those rules are violated, the definitions of the positions and skills become void and there is no way to compare one team or individual to the other.
The biggest problem today is not so much understanding what role the rules play as much as it is understanding where fouls and penalties belong in relation to sports. The answer is that they do not have any place in the sport whatsoever.
I find basketball to be the biggest violator of this principle. If a man gets beat on defense and the offense is about to score an easy lay-up, it is expected and accepted for the defender to foul the potential scorer to avoid a score. It’s called a “good foul”, and proponents of it say “it’s part of the game.”
The fact of the matter is that it is not part of the game. If the rulebook says, “do not do this”, that means that action has no part in the game, it does not belong within the confines of the game and it is not to be done. Fouling someone, despite the reason, is a foul. In the game of basketball, there is to be no fouling. If you want to play the game the way it was meant to be played, you do not foul the other team.
As I said above, the rules are designed to foster a competitive environment, so violating the rules voids the competition. When that defender got beaten, he lost. The guy with the ball was too fast, too agile, or too skilled and was able to beat the defense and get an open look at the basket. In that brief bout of competition, the offense prevailed. Offense and defense square off, and either the ball falls into the hands of the defense, or the offense finds a way to get around the defense and score. Fouling someone at the last minute once you’ve been beaten is showing that you don’t have the courage or sportsmanship to acknowledge that you’ve been bested. The whole point of playing well on offense is to get the best possible opportunity to make a shot. If the offense plays well enough to get a lay-up, then that is their reward. Nowhere in the game of basketball does it say that once a defense has been beaten, they can restrain the offense illegally to save face. THAT IS NOT PART OF THE GAME!
When someone drives to the basket and the defense closes around him and blocks the lane, that means the defense was better than the offense for that play. The defense did its job, and the offense should have to regroup and try something else. But instead the beaten dribbler launches himself at the defense and throws the ball in the air. The refs call a foul and the loser—the offense—now gets rewarded. This is referred to as “drawing a foul”, which again, is not part of the game.
In the ideal game of basketball, there are no fouls. The game is meant to be played, designed to be played, so that there isn’t a need or cause for fouls. Fouls spoil the game—they are problems. Fouls are violations of the rules, intrusions on the game that must be dealt with so that the game can continue. A foul is a fly in the ointment. It isn’t a part of the ointment; it is something that does not belong there. Trying to make someone foul you because you do not have the skill to beat them within the parameters established by the sport is pathetic. A pump-fake is designed to throw the defense off guard and give the guy with the ball an open shot at the basket—the goal of playing good offense. But some people use the pump-fake to draw a foul—throwing themselves into the airborne defender to purposefully maim their own shot! The very technique sounds cowardly!
I cannot emphasize it enough: fouls are not part of the game. Making someone commit a foul who doesn’t want to foul has no competitive merit. It is against the rules to contaminate the game with a foul, whether you cause it or force someone else to on purpose. As I said before, fouling someone is evidence that you are not able to compete with him on your own merits and on the skills called upon by the nature of the game.
Some would argue that fouls and penalties are part of the game because you can get away with them. A basketball player is allowed six fouls before he is thrown from the game, and football players can foul as much as they want. But you notice no one who commits a foul in football is praised. A cornerback who tackles a receiver while the ball is still in the air isn’t applauded for pass interference. They are applauded when they get away with it, but not if they get caught. Pass interference, offsides…they aren’t considered part of the game. So why is the opposite true in basketball?
The only reason there are six penalties allowed in basketball is because humans make mistakes. We can’t always control what we do and accidents happen. If players were ejected for committing one foul, teams would run out of players very quickly and those who played would do so with excessive caution that would be boring to watch. The belief is that people can and will control purposeful fouls, so when fouls are committed they are most likely by accident and shouldn’t be severely punished. Unfortunately that belief is wrong, as is demonstrated by the current state of basketball in this country.
I won’t even discuss the acting involved in both sports to make it seem like a mild foul was greater than it was, or that a foul that never happened actually did. That is not part of the game either. Bluffing is essential to poker, it is not a skill that makes for a competitive basketball player.
In the past few years, I have found my interest in playing and watching sports has diminished greatly. I don’t want to play basketball because people who are inferior to me feel it is their right, and indeed that it is good basketball, to foul me when they fail to be competitive in a legal way. Many people see winning as proof that they are better, regardless of how poorly they played or how unfair the teams were. Outplaying someone is secondary to creating the most uneven playing field possible.
Watching isn’t any more fun either. I don’t want to see some hapless stooge throw his body into a defensive mass because he didn’t have the skill to get a clean shot any other way. I’m tired of seeing NFL teams squeak by with questionable calls. If a player is a true competitor, he should be able to acknowledge when he’s broken the rules. If there is a fumble and someone recovers it, there shouldn’t be a swarm of other players trying to pry the ball loose. If the man’s knees are down and he has possession of the ball then the play is dead. In the game of football, there is no allowance for an attempt to get the ball away once the play is dead, therefore players who make such an attempt are no longer playing football.
The reason for what I believe to be the escalation of cowardly play is simple: money. More and more people are betting on games now, and a win means money. You need your team to win, so you don’t care what they have to do to achieve victory. Your team could be the worst team out there, but if they somehow manage to finagle a string of wins then you won’t complain. The same goes with the teams themselves. Good players aren’t paid as much as players who win. Winning is good for the franchise, it’s good for business. You get a bonus for winning, not for playing your best.
There is no gray area here. To hear an ESPN radio commentator say that what the Steelers’ quarterback did was good gamesmanship is nauseating. The man knowingly took points for something he did not deserve. In the game of football, the play was dead. Hearing fans say “a win is a win” is the same as saying that what Johnny did to Daniel was the right thing to do. “We’ll take it.”
We shouldn’t. Fans and honest players deserve better than to watch a bunch of gutless crooks prostituting good wholesome competition for a win that will net them more money. People need to start looking at how their precious teams are winning and see if they are as good as their record shows. If you are truly good, you don’t need to foul and you don’t need to try and get away with violations.
I’m not sure how long the perversions of competition have been around. All I know is that many of the athletes playing professional sports today do not have the character, integrity, or security to play their absolute best and see how well they stack up against others. They would be just as happy if the other team forfeited than if they actually had to play them for the win. As long as they have that “W”, it doesn’t matter how it gets there. That’s not the competitive spirit. Too often we take aggression and the willingness to do anything to win as a sign of a competitor when in reality it is evidence of a coward who is afraid to lose and doesn’t believe he can win.
People who play to win are people who have a perverted perception of the game. As I said before, war is one of the only arenas where it is okay to have winning as the end-all. The path to victory doesn’t matter because achieving victory itself is absolutely paramount. By dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese, we didn’t prove we had better fighting skills or more spirit, but we did achieve victory.
In sports, however, the goal is competition. Think about blowouts. The only people who enjoy blowouts are the fans and players of the team who is winning. The purpose of a sport is to see who is better, and as long as both teams stay within the defining rules of the sport, the better team will win. The rules are designed to make sure that better play is rewarded with victory.
When a team plays to win, by definition it means that illegal plays and fouls are not out of the question. In fact, to watch NBA games now, you see that fouls have actually become a part of a teams’ strategy! Does that make it part of the game? No it doesn’t, because fouls are still not permitted in the game of basketball. If Joe steals a car in Virginia so he can make a roadtrip to Florida he will go to jail. Stealing is not allowed. But would you say that because Joe is still alive and because the punishment is only temporary that it was okay for him to steal the car? He got what he wanted, he paid a price for it and life goes on. What’s wrong with that?
In stark contrast to those who play to win, competitors who play to be the best must adhere to the rules and structure of the game. To be the best at a sport means you play the sport the way it was designed to be played and you prevail against others who are also playing the sport as it was meant to be played. There is no other way to determine who is better. Was the Steelers’ receiver a better football player when he caught that pass? No, because the game of football is played within the white lines. The cornerback was playing football, but he cannot compete fairly with someone who is given a slightly wider field in which to run.
For those who continue to insist the fouls are part of the game, I ask where the line should be drawn. In the movie Rocky IV, Rocky is a severe underdog. His reach is about a foot shorter than his opponents’, he’s well past his prime, and he suffers from past injuries. His opponent, the Russian, is uninjured, young, and full of steroids. Would you be in favor of Rocky shooting up during his training sessions? Would he have been the better boxer? Would he have shown he had more heart, perseverance, and skills if he was using something outside the sport to give him the victory? Absolutely not. Remember, this is not a man who fought to win. When he battled Apollo, he said he wanted to go the distance, to do his best. He could have easily justified turning to steroids, but that would have been fighting to win instead of fighting to the best of his abilities.
I fail to see how anyone can frown at the use of steroids but applaud illegal scores or plays. Steroids are just as much a part of the game as any foul is. According to the rules, neither one belongs on the court or on the field, but both can be used to give one team the edge. If you get caught using steroids, you get a fine and a warning. You get three warnings before you get removed from the league, so doesn’t that make it part of the game? You have three warnings to use just like you have six fouls in basketball. That must mean it’s okay.
Just because a sport has been played a certain way by so many teams doesn’t mean it’s okay. Watching people commit or draw fouls in any sport takes away from the purity of the game and shows that those people have no right to be where they are. They aren’t competing to see who truly is the best, they are waging a war that requires victory by any means necessary. Soldiers deserve respect in a time of war, not during an athletic competition.
There is no honor or applause to be given to someone who goes beyond the sport in order to make himself a winner.
I always thought Johnny was a jerk and a coward for attacking Daniel’s injured leg; it was low, dirty and dishonorable, not to mention illegal. I used to think that all good people in the free world would agree with me, but recently I have discovered that is not the case.
It seems that in the sporting arena, such an act is not perceived as wicked, but rather as gamesman-like and smart. If a sport commentator today were to be watching that fateful match, I believe he would say something like this:
“I can’t believe it! Johnny has just swept the leg from under Daniel—the same leg that was injured earlier! Daniel is down and it looks like he could be out of this fight for good. John Crease, the Sensei of the Cobra Kai, is looking on with a grim smile. This aggressive and illegal move will cost Johnny a point, but if Daniel can’t continue then Johnny wins by default. It’s smart play-calling on Crease’s part. He weighed the pros and cons and went with the call that would be most likely to net him a win. …What a gamesman!”
That might sound ludicrous, but the same perversion has poisoned the minds of sports commentators and fans alike. The line between good and bad is being rubbed out for the sake of justifying a victory. Phrases like “Winning isn’t everything” and “May the best man win” are being replaced with “A win is a win” and “Do whatever it takes to get the job done”. “Just do your best” has become a cliché that no one really seems to believe anymore. People no longer compete to see who is better, they compete to win. Despite what you might think, the two goals are far from similar.
I watched a football game the other night between the Steelers and the Dolphins. On one play, the Steelers busted out with an 82-yard pass play that gave them a touchdown and put them in the lead. The only problem was the Steelers’ receiver stepped out of bounds. The refs didn’t catch it, but the coach of the Dolphins did. He threw the red flag to challenge the play but the refs didn’t see that either. The coach for the Steelers knew what was about to happen so he had his kicking crew hurry out on the field and get the extra point over with so that the red flag would become a moot point. He succeeded.
Some people say that was smart football. Some people say that he made the right call, the call that any coach would make. The truth is, he was a coward and showed none of the qualities of a true competitor. He knew the rules had been broken, that his receiver had stepped out of bounds and that the play should have been blown dead. He knew the touchdown was illegitimate and yet he did everything he could to make sure he would get away with it anyway. It was sneaky and underhanded and not at all within the scope of the game of football. He was playing for the “W”, not to prove that his Steelers were better than the Dolphins.
The purpose of competition is not simply to declare a victor, nor does a true competitor simply compete to win. A true competitor wants to pit his best against someone else’s best and see how he matches up. He wants to take all his skills, abilities, talents, experiences and knowledge, and see if he is better than his peers. A competitor plays to compete, not to win.
Wars are fought to win. Nations at war do not want to compete to see who is better; they want to preserve their borders, their way of life, or their freedom. All is fair in war because there can be no rules. After all it’s hard to make rules when killing someone is not only allowed, it’s the whole point! Human life becomes secondary to the cause for which the soldiers are fighting, and when that happens there is nothing that is forbidden. Victory is not achieved by reaching a certain amount of kills, nor is it defined within a certain amount of time. Victory comes only when the enemy can no longer oppose you and must surrender or become extinct. Casualties and destruction mean nothing because winning means everything.
Sports are not wars. The absolute and extreme measures that are taken in war to secure victory cannot and should not be allowed in competition. If you cannot beat a team within the rules and regulations laid out by the sport, then you do not deserve to win.
I always found it peculiar that people would say, “May the best man win” until I realized that the best man does not always win. The heart of a true competitor wants the best to win, regardless of who it is. Why? Well, if he is the best, he wants to be able to claim victory, not have it ripped out of his hands by the devious devices of his opponents. On the other hand, if he is not the best, he doesn’t want to take what is not his. Pure competition is designed to praise the achievements and efforts of a superior competitor, not someone who was able to manipulate and sneak more points on the scoreboard.
People who break the rules or knowingly commit fouls only prove that they are inferior to their opponents. It shows that they cannot win on their own merits—they are not the better athletes. In order to win, or to give the illusion that they are better, they must step outside the parameters set by the sport to give themselves an advantage. The Steelers might well have been better than the Dolphins, but the fact that the coach would exploit a missed call shows that he did not have confidence that his team could win, or even to make another big play like that. If he did, if he truly believed his team was better, he would have acknowledged the foul and then marched down the field on the next play.
The most fun I ever had playing basketball was with a very competitive friend of mine from high school. We were almost even in terms of skill, so our games were not only close but they were extremely intense. There was a certain amount of pride on the line as to who had improved more since the last time we played, and who would be one-up the next time we played. But what really made the competition work was the honesty we had. I remember one play in particular where I was on defense and I had managed to back him into a corner. He couldn’t dribble and he had no open shot. He took a step back and launched a prayer right over my hands that swished through the net. I got the rebound and tossed him the ball. He tossed it back and said, “My foot was out of bounds”.
He wanted to win, but it was more important to him that he won fairly with his own abilities. That foot out of bounds had given him the space he needed to foil my defense, but it was a foot he shouldn’t have had. I didn’t notice, but he knew. He went on to win that game, and he left the court a true winner. We each had played our best, and he had proven the better man fair and square. Had he kept quiet and taken the point, he wouldn’t have known if he really could have beaten me that game. I don’t know how anyone can walk off a court or field with any kind of pride knowing that they won because they got away with something illegal, or because they were able to manipulate the system.
If the roles in The Karate Kid had been reversed for the final bout, would we still have been able to root for Daniel? Despite the fact that he was the underdog and a good kid in general, would we have been okay with him fighting dirty to win?
There are three kinds of rules in sports. The first kind of rules establish the technical aspects of the game: field size, objectives, point system, etc.., The second kind of rules are created to protect the health or well-being of the players with safety in mind. The third set of rules make sure that all factors outside the competitors are as equal as possible so that they can truly test their abilities against each other.
A receiver needs to be able to run a good route, have great speed, agility, dexterity, and field-awareness. He must have endurance and stamina to run several plays in a row at full speed, and he needs to have good hands and presence of mind. The same list of qualities is needed by his direct nemesis, the cornerback. The rules are designed to make sure those qualities are tested, and that the speed, agility, etc.., of each player are pitted against the other.
For example, a cornerback cannot make contact with a receiver after five yards. Why? Because if a cornerback could wrestle, bump, and grapple with the receiver, it wouldn’t be a match of speed and agility but of upper body strength; they would essentially become lineman.
A lineman cannot hold his opponent. Why? Because the battle on the line is a match of balance, power, and strength. The offensive lineman wants to hit low, hard, and fast to knock the defender off-balance and take control of the battle. There is technique involved in blocking and pass-rushing that would be completely discarded if all the lineman had to do was tackle his opponent or cling desperately onto his jersey until the play was over.
When a lineman holds, it shows that he was beaten. For whatever reason, his opponent was able to gain the upper hand and the only way the lineman can compensate is to cheat. Again, the competition is over and the other man was better. But if the lineman can get away with the hold, he might very well buy his quarterback enough time to get the pass off and score a touchdown; the end result therefore was not an accurate depiction of which team was the more skilled on that particular play.
The rules create the necessary grounds of competition. They set the parameters of what skills and talents someone must have to be good at any given position. Just like the rules define what it takes to be a good sprinter or swimmer in the Olympics, so too do they define what makes a superior lineman or receiver. When the rules are broken, the guidelines are destroyed and the value of competition is gone. If all you have to do is be able to get away with holding, then any scrub of any size and skill could be a lineman—all he’d have to do is get hold of his opponent in a way the ref couldn’t see and hold on for dear life.
Rules are also designed as checks and balances to make sure no one has an advantage going into the match-up. There are reasons the offensive line cannot move prior to the snap but the defensive line can. The rules are not random requisites thrown out there by the creators of the sport just to make things difficult. There is a reason for each one of them, and they have to be specific because there has to be as little subjectivity as possible. A toe out of bounds might not really give a receiver that much of an advantage, but how else would you enforce the boundaries with any consistency other than to say both feet must be completely in bounds?
Once general rules define how the game is played, it is absolutely necessary to make sure that the definition of the game is followed faithfully so that it can birth a competitive atmosphere. If kicking was allowed in basketball, the sport would not only be chaotic, but it would become difficult to determine who really had more skill and in what areas. Offense would be nearly impossible, and defense would be far too easy. It would be a mismatch almost all the time and no one could really claim to have a better mastery of the sport. Once dribbling was established as the only way to move with the ball, there had to be rules that put boundaries on what the defense could and couldn’t do to interfere with that movement. Those rules defined what it took to be a great defender as well as what made a good dribbler. Any time those rules are violated, the definitions of the positions and skills become void and there is no way to compare one team or individual to the other.
The biggest problem today is not so much understanding what role the rules play as much as it is understanding where fouls and penalties belong in relation to sports. The answer is that they do not have any place in the sport whatsoever.
I find basketball to be the biggest violator of this principle. If a man gets beat on defense and the offense is about to score an easy lay-up, it is expected and accepted for the defender to foul the potential scorer to avoid a score. It’s called a “good foul”, and proponents of it say “it’s part of the game.”
The fact of the matter is that it is not part of the game. If the rulebook says, “do not do this”, that means that action has no part in the game, it does not belong within the confines of the game and it is not to be done. Fouling someone, despite the reason, is a foul. In the game of basketball, there is to be no fouling. If you want to play the game the way it was meant to be played, you do not foul the other team.
As I said above, the rules are designed to foster a competitive environment, so violating the rules voids the competition. When that defender got beaten, he lost. The guy with the ball was too fast, too agile, or too skilled and was able to beat the defense and get an open look at the basket. In that brief bout of competition, the offense prevailed. Offense and defense square off, and either the ball falls into the hands of the defense, or the offense finds a way to get around the defense and score. Fouling someone at the last minute once you’ve been beaten is showing that you don’t have the courage or sportsmanship to acknowledge that you’ve been bested. The whole point of playing well on offense is to get the best possible opportunity to make a shot. If the offense plays well enough to get a lay-up, then that is their reward. Nowhere in the game of basketball does it say that once a defense has been beaten, they can restrain the offense illegally to save face. THAT IS NOT PART OF THE GAME!
When someone drives to the basket and the defense closes around him and blocks the lane, that means the defense was better than the offense for that play. The defense did its job, and the offense should have to regroup and try something else. But instead the beaten dribbler launches himself at the defense and throws the ball in the air. The refs call a foul and the loser—the offense—now gets rewarded. This is referred to as “drawing a foul”, which again, is not part of the game.
In the ideal game of basketball, there are no fouls. The game is meant to be played, designed to be played, so that there isn’t a need or cause for fouls. Fouls spoil the game—they are problems. Fouls are violations of the rules, intrusions on the game that must be dealt with so that the game can continue. A foul is a fly in the ointment. It isn’t a part of the ointment; it is something that does not belong there. Trying to make someone foul you because you do not have the skill to beat them within the parameters established by the sport is pathetic. A pump-fake is designed to throw the defense off guard and give the guy with the ball an open shot at the basket—the goal of playing good offense. But some people use the pump-fake to draw a foul—throwing themselves into the airborne defender to purposefully maim their own shot! The very technique sounds cowardly!
I cannot emphasize it enough: fouls are not part of the game. Making someone commit a foul who doesn’t want to foul has no competitive merit. It is against the rules to contaminate the game with a foul, whether you cause it or force someone else to on purpose. As I said before, fouling someone is evidence that you are not able to compete with him on your own merits and on the skills called upon by the nature of the game.
Some would argue that fouls and penalties are part of the game because you can get away with them. A basketball player is allowed six fouls before he is thrown from the game, and football players can foul as much as they want. But you notice no one who commits a foul in football is praised. A cornerback who tackles a receiver while the ball is still in the air isn’t applauded for pass interference. They are applauded when they get away with it, but not if they get caught. Pass interference, offsides…they aren’t considered part of the game. So why is the opposite true in basketball?
The only reason there are six penalties allowed in basketball is because humans make mistakes. We can’t always control what we do and accidents happen. If players were ejected for committing one foul, teams would run out of players very quickly and those who played would do so with excessive caution that would be boring to watch. The belief is that people can and will control purposeful fouls, so when fouls are committed they are most likely by accident and shouldn’t be severely punished. Unfortunately that belief is wrong, as is demonstrated by the current state of basketball in this country.
I won’t even discuss the acting involved in both sports to make it seem like a mild foul was greater than it was, or that a foul that never happened actually did. That is not part of the game either. Bluffing is essential to poker, it is not a skill that makes for a competitive basketball player.
In the past few years, I have found my interest in playing and watching sports has diminished greatly. I don’t want to play basketball because people who are inferior to me feel it is their right, and indeed that it is good basketball, to foul me when they fail to be competitive in a legal way. Many people see winning as proof that they are better, regardless of how poorly they played or how unfair the teams were. Outplaying someone is secondary to creating the most uneven playing field possible.
Watching isn’t any more fun either. I don’t want to see some hapless stooge throw his body into a defensive mass because he didn’t have the skill to get a clean shot any other way. I’m tired of seeing NFL teams squeak by with questionable calls. If a player is a true competitor, he should be able to acknowledge when he’s broken the rules. If there is a fumble and someone recovers it, there shouldn’t be a swarm of other players trying to pry the ball loose. If the man’s knees are down and he has possession of the ball then the play is dead. In the game of football, there is no allowance for an attempt to get the ball away once the play is dead, therefore players who make such an attempt are no longer playing football.
The reason for what I believe to be the escalation of cowardly play is simple: money. More and more people are betting on games now, and a win means money. You need your team to win, so you don’t care what they have to do to achieve victory. Your team could be the worst team out there, but if they somehow manage to finagle a string of wins then you won’t complain. The same goes with the teams themselves. Good players aren’t paid as much as players who win. Winning is good for the franchise, it’s good for business. You get a bonus for winning, not for playing your best.
There is no gray area here. To hear an ESPN radio commentator say that what the Steelers’ quarterback did was good gamesmanship is nauseating. The man knowingly took points for something he did not deserve. In the game of football, the play was dead. Hearing fans say “a win is a win” is the same as saying that what Johnny did to Daniel was the right thing to do. “We’ll take it.”
We shouldn’t. Fans and honest players deserve better than to watch a bunch of gutless crooks prostituting good wholesome competition for a win that will net them more money. People need to start looking at how their precious teams are winning and see if they are as good as their record shows. If you are truly good, you don’t need to foul and you don’t need to try and get away with violations.
I’m not sure how long the perversions of competition have been around. All I know is that many of the athletes playing professional sports today do not have the character, integrity, or security to play their absolute best and see how well they stack up against others. They would be just as happy if the other team forfeited than if they actually had to play them for the win. As long as they have that “W”, it doesn’t matter how it gets there. That’s not the competitive spirit. Too often we take aggression and the willingness to do anything to win as a sign of a competitor when in reality it is evidence of a coward who is afraid to lose and doesn’t believe he can win.
People who play to win are people who have a perverted perception of the game. As I said before, war is one of the only arenas where it is okay to have winning as the end-all. The path to victory doesn’t matter because achieving victory itself is absolutely paramount. By dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese, we didn’t prove we had better fighting skills or more spirit, but we did achieve victory.
In sports, however, the goal is competition. Think about blowouts. The only people who enjoy blowouts are the fans and players of the team who is winning. The purpose of a sport is to see who is better, and as long as both teams stay within the defining rules of the sport, the better team will win. The rules are designed to make sure that better play is rewarded with victory.
When a team plays to win, by definition it means that illegal plays and fouls are not out of the question. In fact, to watch NBA games now, you see that fouls have actually become a part of a teams’ strategy! Does that make it part of the game? No it doesn’t, because fouls are still not permitted in the game of basketball. If Joe steals a car in Virginia so he can make a roadtrip to Florida he will go to jail. Stealing is not allowed. But would you say that because Joe is still alive and because the punishment is only temporary that it was okay for him to steal the car? He got what he wanted, he paid a price for it and life goes on. What’s wrong with that?
In stark contrast to those who play to win, competitors who play to be the best must adhere to the rules and structure of the game. To be the best at a sport means you play the sport the way it was designed to be played and you prevail against others who are also playing the sport as it was meant to be played. There is no other way to determine who is better. Was the Steelers’ receiver a better football player when he caught that pass? No, because the game of football is played within the white lines. The cornerback was playing football, but he cannot compete fairly with someone who is given a slightly wider field in which to run.
For those who continue to insist the fouls are part of the game, I ask where the line should be drawn. In the movie Rocky IV, Rocky is a severe underdog. His reach is about a foot shorter than his opponents’, he’s well past his prime, and he suffers from past injuries. His opponent, the Russian, is uninjured, young, and full of steroids. Would you be in favor of Rocky shooting up during his training sessions? Would he have been the better boxer? Would he have shown he had more heart, perseverance, and skills if he was using something outside the sport to give him the victory? Absolutely not. Remember, this is not a man who fought to win. When he battled Apollo, he said he wanted to go the distance, to do his best. He could have easily justified turning to steroids, but that would have been fighting to win instead of fighting to the best of his abilities.
I fail to see how anyone can frown at the use of steroids but applaud illegal scores or plays. Steroids are just as much a part of the game as any foul is. According to the rules, neither one belongs on the court or on the field, but both can be used to give one team the edge. If you get caught using steroids, you get a fine and a warning. You get three warnings before you get removed from the league, so doesn’t that make it part of the game? You have three warnings to use just like you have six fouls in basketball. That must mean it’s okay.
Just because a sport has been played a certain way by so many teams doesn’t mean it’s okay. Watching people commit or draw fouls in any sport takes away from the purity of the game and shows that those people have no right to be where they are. They aren’t competing to see who truly is the best, they are waging a war that requires victory by any means necessary. Soldiers deserve respect in a time of war, not during an athletic competition.
There is no honor or applause to be given to someone who goes beyond the sport in order to make himself a winner.
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