Let's get this out of the way from the outset: I think that hating others is OK. Some people are assholes and deserve -- even
beg -- to be hated. Our neighbors, for example. The humorless, sexless skumbags (a purported male and a purported female, both of whom dress like they're competing for a role in the Saturday Night Live skit "Sprockets") have done everything but fly a Nazi flag in their quest to promote their New World Order. If a right-thinking American can't hate people like our neighbors, damn it, than the 15 stripes on the American flag no longer stand for "good luck."
In fact, I not only think that it is OK to hate, I
embrace my Inner Hater. I take great joy in the sublime pleasures of hatred, and I am proud to say that I find it equally easy to hate all persons irrespective as to race, religion, creed, color, gender, sexual preference, political affiliation or national origin. If you are a person, then the odds are pretty good that I hate you. (If you are reading this and aren't a human -- say, you're a very smart dog -- then I recommend that you log off the Internet immediately ... and don't forget to clear your history file of all that Doggy Porn.) What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I believe that my Equal Opportunity Policy of Hatred ("EOPH") is as American as Canadian Bacon which, most people don't know, was actually invented in America. Cleveland, I think.
Properly construed, sports were created to promote all of the wonderful "group hug" feelings associated with hatred. True sports fans bubble over with hate, and thrive off its rage in an almost magical, rainbows-and-unicorns kind of way: sports fans choose to hate others, not because of differences in race, religion, creed or physical deformities but because those others are rooting for a different sports team.
True sports fans know that hating others because they are a different race from you, or a different religion or creed, or because they have physical limitations that you don't, is morally reprehensible and wrong, but that hating others because they root for the Yankees, for example, is not only
NOT WRONG, it is perfectly harmonious with the forces of nature.
I've always appreciated that about sports. I'm comforted by knowing, for example, that I can attend a Baltimore Ravens NFL football game with a black man on my right, a Hindu on my left and a Native American female in the row behind me[*] and the four of us -- me, the black, the Hindu and the Squaw -- can join together, as one, in our Kumbaya-like desire to kicking the fucking shit out of the black, white, Hindu, Injun, male and female freaks who are sitting in the cheap seats wearing their Pittsburgh Steeler jerseys. It's exactly like the 1960's, except with a little less acoustic music and a little more team spirit.
I bring this up because there have been a few incidents in the news recently, including one here in Baltimore, where a "radio personality" was alleged to have made comments with racial overtones. In the local incident, Baltimore RadioWonk (and former New Orleans resident) Anita Marks referred to current San Diego Charger/ former University of Maryland alum/ verified steroids user Shawne Merriman as a "juice monkey." In response, RadioWonk Rob Long, a "radio personality" whose talk show appears on a competing radio station, called for her to apologize for using a term with clear racial overtones.
I understand why Rob Long was so upset. Ever since OJ "Juice" Simpson (a confirmed black male) beheaded his ex-wife (a confirmed white female) and then used her skull as a lantern so that he could play golf at night, the term "juice" has been commonly used as a racial epithet. For example, everybody knows that the phrase "cranberry juice" is slang for Bosnians. And to use language this way is morally wrong; no matter who kills whom (be the killers a single black male or an entire nation of racial cleansers), can't we all agree to stop referring to other human beings as food products?
More to the point, I'm angry and frustrated that once again the purity of athletic competition is being sullied by arbitrary divisiveness and prejudice.
Yes, Anita Mark sucks shit and should go rot in hell -- not because she may or may not be a racist -- but because she is probably a New Orleans Saints fan. And, in the end, isn't that all that really matters?
[*]I was tempted to add "and an Asian in the row in front of me" but, in 30+ years that I have gone to professional football games, I've never seen an Asian in attendance. And, believe me, I've looked. But if my example were a ping-pong tournament, or whatever sport that Asians watch, I'm sure the same reasoning would apply.
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