Jared Loughner and the National Football League

Something has been bothering me about the left’s programmed response to Jared Loughner’s mass murder, and it’s not what you think. Oh, I’m plenty bothered that progressives have quite deliberately and with all malice aforethought called me a murderer to advance their totalitarian speech codes, but that’s not what’s really been bugging me.

See, the ridiculous notion that the metaphor — a linguistic device at least as old as ancient Sumer where Gilgamesh said his friend Enkidu was awesome like a leopard — drive someone to a shoot up a supermarket parking lot ought to be easily disproven, yet it isn’t. It is as persistent as…well, let’s just say it’s very persistent.

But a thought occurred to me this afternoon. If metaphors, especially violent metaphors (you know, the kind that ought to be kept in hermetically-sealed containers and handled only by specially-trained leftists in layers of protective gear), are that potent, then we should see outbreaks of violence in other venues where similar metaphors abound.

I’m thinking, specifically, of professional football.

Unless you have just wandered down from a mountain cave in which you’ve lived your entire life, you’re familiar with the language of football. Fans talks about how their team crushed or destroyed another team, how defenders annihilated helpless running backs or wide receivers, and how players won battles and broke the other team. Individual players are described either as dangerous threats, barely under control, or weak pantywaists who can’t hoist their own helmet. Watching a football game on television can be like watching a World War II documentary on the History Channel, the war-like metaphors flow so freely.

Yet I can’t remember the last time a fan attacked a football player outside the stadium. That’s not for lack of opportunity. Professional athletes go out all the time — to team events, nightclubs, other sporting events — and they don’t travel with security details. They stay at public hotels, take regular passenger buses to the stadium, and travel through commercial airports. Football players are easily accessible almost constantly, but they do so as safely as you or I. Why is that? If violent rhetoric causes people to commit violent acts against the targets of that rhetoric, surely football players would be under almost constant threat.

Let’s not leave the fans out of this either. I’ve never been to a big political convention, but I don’t imagine there are people there with their favorite candidate’s name emblazoned on a replica jersey, chugging brews out of a beer helmet. I watched the Democratic National Convention on television and I didn’t see rows of screaming fans with letters painted on their bellies that spelled out “OBAMA”. There is no tailgating at a political convention. I feel pretty confident saying that football fans are far more ardent about their teams than political fans are about their parties, and football fans are a lot more likely to get drunk.

They also have more chances for that rhetoric to take effect. We have elections every two years, but the average football fan has 16 weeks to build up a good hate-on against other teams and players, and that doesn’t include the playoffs, when things really get heated. If we’re talking about a constant buildup of hate, remember that most football teams play their most hated division rivals twice a year, every year. So why didn’t a crazed Redskins fan try to off Danny White or Tom Landry? Heck, for that matter, why hasn’t someone tried to take out Dan Snyder after all the heated rhetoric about him we’ve gotten from local sports radio and Redskins fans over the past ten years?

The answer is simple. Mere rhetoric, even the rhetoric of crushing and destroying and maiming, does not impel people to violence, not in football and not in politics. What we are seeing now is nothing more than another tired progressive attempt to bend a crisis to their political ends. Their outrage is sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing and we should treat it as such. Better yet, we should take the position taken by Roger Kimball today.

What so infuriates the party of the Left is that those on the accusative side of the equation have woken up and have decided they don’t like it. It’s a bit like the chap who came across the most amazing animal: It protects itself when attacked. Message to the world’s Krugmanites: Get used to it. We’re on the march, we’re targeting you, you’re in our crosshairs, and, no, this is not an incitement to “hate” or political divisiveness: It is what politics in a democracy is all about.

Indeed it is. Now let’s get our there and crush them.

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Tags: Free Speech (?)

Category: Political Pontifications