November 6, 2013
Letter to the Editor
The Sun Sentinel

RE: If it works, keep doing it – Some comments on your unlinkable one sentence editorial today about the shame we, and I mean every last one of us, share in the Dolphin Bullygate crisis.

Sirs,

“Bullying behavior brings shame on Dolphins, region”
Today
You

A 16 year old girl was raped and beaten by 5 people 2 days ago. Should Broward County be indicted?

Was South Florida guilty of shooting Versace?

Yes, if we follow your sham Logic, is the only answer to both questions.

[That football is an important tool in the socialization of teenage males overloaded on raging hormones is a subject for a different discussion.]

Since I moved to Broward County a lot of politicians have gone to jail. [Thank God I moved here from Hudson County, New Jersey. That men are not angels is a lesson learned at mother’s knee.] What did I do to cause that? What did you do to cause that? What did we do to cause that?

Collective guilt is one of the sign posts on the road to Avernus. As the first great multicultural poet said “The sins we do two by two we pay for one by one”.

2,000,000 males play football in this country. Less than 2,000 of them play in the NFL. The culture is the same at each level. No matter how long it has been since you played, the culture, the one that encourages toughness, both physical and mental, is always there.

You use the term “workplace environment” as if you were talking about the Broward County Board of Education. Since you say the “victim” likes classic literature let me include one of my favorites. The Great Dr. Johnson – Samuel, not Lyndon – said “Such stupidity, sir, is not found in nature”.

Like it or not, and modern American Liberal editorial writers abhor it, there is a Darwinian selection process that begins in grammar school. The winners wind up in front of 80,000 fans screaming in a most feral way. The noise at kickoff is not 80,000 voices humming Kumbaya. The players are big men who are bent on violence. The more violent they are the better they are paid. There is always someone newcomer challenging them. Violence, and the discipline to use it wisely and well, can overcome physical advantage. I suggest you look back to the Jets and the Colts and Miami and Nebraska. Both were played in the Orange Bowl.

Nixon ended the draft. It is always well to note that when he did the burning of draft cards stopped, it being a moot point. Look it up. I mention that because there are no NFL “press gangs” rounding up large farm boys from corn fields to make them play. Beginning from age 8 they choose to play.

Perhaps Richie Incognito, and I add that the Gods of football are pleased with his name, would not be the first choice to be with to listen to the Goldberg Variations Jonathan Martin, “a former Stanford student who likes classic literature and classical music”, and what in the name of Vince Lombardi and Bear Bryant does that have to do with any of this, choose to enter this world voluntarily.

At the risk of being not sufficiently sensitive to gender issues it is the way men settle things. It’s akin to making law and sausages. If you don’t like to watch messy things turn your eyes away. If a disability, be it physical or mental, prevents him from playing so be it. Let him decide.

We enter this at our own peril.

It should be settled intramurally.

Unless of course you are desirous of sensitivity training for wedge busters.




Kevin Smith