The Binary Circumstance

Religion is contaminating sports in the same way it is contaminating the current political climate.

Skip Oliva writes:

[Tony] Dungy uses his post as a football coach to proselytize, and media members like [Len] Pasquerelli give him a free pass. Somehow, I doubt a coach who used his post to promote atheism or even libertarian values would be given such kid-glove treatment. But religion–at least the evangelical Christian variety–is a shield when it comes to the sports press. Either they’re too afraid to challenge coaches and players who claim the moral high ground, or like Pasquerelli they’re willing to tolerate it if it means getting access or a good sound bite. (And Pasquerelli goes out of his way to explain just how wonderful an interview Dungy is, but then again, many religious fanatics are charismatic.)

Last year, Dungy faced mild press criticism for speaking at a fund-raising event for the Indiana Family Institute, a political group that advocates the imposition of Christian values by force (i.e., government.)

Religious delusions seem to always get a free pass in the media.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen people make faith-based comments on TV shows like the evening news or The Today Show which go unchallenged by the interviewer. If the subject of the interview was talking about their belief that a little green man was sitting on the sofa next to them and having a positive impact on their life, it would be challenged and attacked as a delusion. But if they talk about God being present or orchestrating something that recently happened in their life, the interviewer just nods his/her head in agreement.

To run for president, it is imperative that candidates talk about their faith in the existence of little green men to even be considered for the job. Oops, I meant God.

Just because a belief is shared by the majority of people doesn’t make it true. Remember when most people believed the earth was flat? How did they treat people who said that evidence supported a round earth? The same way they treat people who question faith in God.

Slate says that popular culture is a contrary indicator of how well things are going on Wall Street and provides some evidence to back up the claim. Hedge fund managers, private equity firms and very rich people should be worried.

We’ve seen this before. Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities timed the zeitgeist—and the market—perfectly, debuting in October 1987, the month the 1980s bull market came to a crashing end. But Oliver Stone’s Wall Street didn’t hit the theaters until December 1987 and tanked at the box office as a result. After a few punk years, Wall Street caught fire again in the mid-1990s. But programming executives didn’t catch on to the new wave until much later. Darren Star, who had neatly captured a cultural moment with HBO’s Sex and the City, rolled out The $treet on Fox in the fall of 2000. This show about the professional and personal lives of attractive employees at a New York brokerage firm arrived at a time when Wall Street was falling out of favor, and lasted just 12 episodes, one more than Bull, which was also about the professional and personal lives of attractive employees at a New York brokerage. The real-estate bubble produced the ABC sitcom Hot Properties, a bawdy sendup of the lives of four attractive real-estate brokers. It debuted in the fall of 2005, just as housing prices were about to peak, and went into foreclosure after 13 unfunny episodes.

[…]

The fall slate includes Dirty Sexy Money, an ABC drama about an insanely rich and charmingly dysfunctional American family based in New York (”they put the upper in Upper East Side”). And Big Shots, an ABC drama about four insanely rich and charmingly dysfunctional corporate hot shots based in New York. And Cashmere Mafia, an ABC drama about four insanely rich and charmingly dysfunctional female corporate hot shots based in New York. (Frances O’Connor plays Zoe, a “top investment banker.”) The sidekick on CBS’s new vampire show, Moonlight, is “eternally young, wealthy and mischievous Josef, a hedge fund trader who relishes his uniqueness.”

I don’t think they have much to worry about. First of all they’re rich. On top of that, the government is more than happy to bail them out of any pending financial disaster at the taxpayers’ expense.

Shortly after NBC’s Matt Lauer arrived at the Virginia Tech campus he walked from West Ambler Johnston Hall to Norris Hall to see how long it would take. He said in a report that it took about five minutes. He wondered aloud what the shooter was doing during the two hours between the shootings in the dorm and the carnage in the engineering building.

Now, we have at least part of the answer and it’s a little ironic given Lauer’s report. It appears that Cho Seung-Hui sent a package to NBC in New York.

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Between his first and second bursts of gunfire, the Virginia Tech gunman mailed a package to NBC News containing what authorities said were video, photos of himself brandishng weapons, and a rambling diatribe about getting even with rich people.

[…]

NBC said that a time stamp on the package indicated the material was mailed in the two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire in a high-rise dormitory and the second fusillade, at a classroom building.

The package included digital images of him holding weapons and a manifesto that “rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even,” according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.

Add to this the fact that he had no ID on him when he committed the murder-suicide, and it took some time for the police to identify him, it sounds like he wanted to control how he was portrayed in the media. Perhaps he hoped that NBC would get the packet before he had been identified. There were three attempts at getting the zip code correct on the envelope and NBC reported on the Nightly News that if it had had the correct zip code, it probably would have arrived a day earlier.

It has been reported more than once that his writings conveyed a hatred of the rich. I’m going to guess that he was either never explosed to Ayn Rand’s philosophy or if exposed, he didn’t understand it.

Here are some quotes from Cho’s video manifesto:

• “You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time.”

• “You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.”

• “Do you know what it feels like to be spit on your face and have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon a cross and left to bleed to death for your amusement?

You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. And you want to inject as much misery in our lives because you can, just because you can. You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”

His view of himself as a martyr for some cause reminds me of the 9/11 terrorists. As you can see, religious ideation played a role in his view of himself as some kind of savior and his plot to get back at those he viewed as evil doers.

This kid was in a tremendous amount of pain and he wanted to be sure that everybody else felt it as well.

Again, if he had incorporated the basic tenets of Rand’s philosophy into his thinking, he would not have held self-sacrifice in such high regard, nor would he have held Jesus Christ up in such a bizarre way as a role model.

Al Sharpton has made a career of making racist comments, so it’s hard to stomach his calling for Don Imus to be fired from his radio program. Al Sharpton has done much worse and as far as I know, never apologized for it.

In the Tawana Brawley case, a 15-year-old black girl was found smeared with feces, lying in a garbage bag, her clothing torn and burned and with various slurs and epithets written on her body in charcoal. Brawley claimed that she had been assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police officers, in the town of Wappingers Falls, New York.

Attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason joined Sharpton in support of Brawley. A grand jury was convened; after seven months of examining police and medical records, the jury determined that Brawley lied about being assaulted by the police. Sharpton, Maddox and Mason accused the Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape. The three were successfully sued for slander and ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, the jury finding Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two and Mason for one. [6] [boldface added]

In an interview with Bill O’Reilly, Sharpton was clearly on the side of rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong and the black woman who made false, racist allegations against three white college students in the Duke lacrosse rape case. I haven’t seen any apologies for that either.

O’REILLY: Why are we standing up for the girl if there is the possibility, based upon evidence, that the girl may have fabricated the story? Why don’t we all pull back and let the authorities investigate and let the legal system work?

SHARPTON: Well, first of all, the authorities have charged there was a crime, so they are not saying that at all. Second of all, people on any side of an argument have the ride to advocate on behalf of who they believe. Thirdly, I think that when the prosecutors went forward, they clearly have said this girl is the victim, so why would we be trying the victim and not the…

O’REILLY: I don’t want to try anybody, but there is enough evidence that has surfaced here. We have evidence that DNA doesn’t match the kids. We have evidence that ABC News uncovered that there is a recording made by a security guard who looked at the victim after she said she was raped and said there was no problem and we have a police officer who found the victim drunk in a car in a 7-Eleven who phoned it in before she went to the hospital. So when you have three elements like that, I say there is reasonable doubt right now. You know what the grand jury proceeding is.

SHARPTON: Absolutely.

O’REILLY: It’s a one-sided proceeding.

SHARPTON: But I think that all of the facts that you have laid out the DA had — and I know this DA is probably not one that is crazy. He would not have proceeded if he did not feel that he could convict. So it tells me that all of what you said is either not true or he has convincing evidence that would certainly knock that out and no one is not letting him proceed…

Sharpton, a Pentacostal preacher and politician, likes prosecutors who give him the version of reality that is consistent with his own racist views.

As is the case with most religious people, evidence (or lack of it) is disregarded when making judgments.

Blacks have a long history of being victimized by a legal system that rejected evidence if favor of prejudice. You would think Al Sharpton would have learned from history and devote his time to fighting irrationality and hypocrisy rather than exemplifying both.