The era of the cheap shot

 

The New Orleans Saints put out an injury bounty on opponents. Meta World Peace (aka Ron Artest, NBA thug) throws an elbow that earns him a suspension and puts a player out with a concussion. The NHL playoffs are a spectacle of mayhem. 

We are living in the era of the cheap shot.

Hard play is great. This crap ain’t hard play. It’s assault with intent to injure. Seriously. If you or I deliberately hit someone in the throat with a stick or threw an elbow to their ear, we’d be up on charges. 

Consider the hit that Raffi Torres of the Phoenix Coyotes put on Marian Hossa of the Chicago Blackhawks last week. Torres left his skates and went for Hossa’s head, well after Hossa had unloaded the puck. Hossa left the ice on a stretcher and is still recovering from a serious concussion. 

A thug took a far superior opponent off the ice in the playoffs. For the Coyotes, Torres for Hossa was a good tradeoff.

Torres’ 25-game suspension is a stern message, but only that. Torres is a serial offender; he should be gone, done, banned from the league.

This NHL playoff season has been rife with cheap shots. Not just big hits, not just fighting where two players square off — we’re talking vicious, inexcusable headhunting. The league needs to come down harder on this kind of behavior. If you’re going to deliberately threaten the career and health of your opponents, your career should be at stake, too. A Torres-scale suspension for a first offense. A season for the second. Next time you do it, you’re done. Three strikes, you’re out.

As for the Saints’ coaching staff… Putting a bounty on opponents is so far beyond the pale, it should be grounds for a lifetime ban for the first offense.

Real zero tolerance would put a stop to this stuff in a hurry. It’s doubtful that any of the professional sports will go that far. 

Given the primacy of sports in American cultural life, what happens in the arena percolates through the whole culture. Unless we want to live in the Society of the Sucker Punch, we’d do well to put a stop to the mayhem.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Stand your ground

The tragic Trayvon Martin case has cast “Stand Your Ground” laws into the spotlight. In some quarters there is a cry to repeal such laws as an incitement to vigilantism.

That would be a bad call.

Stand Your Ground or “No Duty to Retreat” laws extend so-called Castle Doctrine from your home to any place you have a right to be. In short, if you are assailed, you have the right to defend yourself — to the extent of deadly force if you reasonably believe your life is threatened. You are not obligated to retreat.

In a society of free men and women, which we purport to be, such a doctrine is appropriate and necessary to preserve the absolute right to be secure in your person.

Now, retreating from a bad situation — or avoiding it in the first place — is usually the wisest course of action, legally, morally and tactically. However, the law should not put the onus on the citizen. On the other hand, if you deliberately place yourself in the position of initiating or pursuing and escalating a confrontation, Stand Your Ground should not apply.

No law can be written so as to address every situation absolutely in its every nuance. Ultimately, we must rely on the judgment of police, district attorneys, grand juries, perhaps a jury of one’s peers. Justice, being in the hands of humans, is imperfect.

Stand Your Ground should remain on the books.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The debasement of language

Tribune Media Services, which provides syndicated columns for The Nugget’s Page 2 opinion section, recently sent out a “Sensitive Language Advisory.” It read thus:

“In Joel Brinkley’s American Voices column for release 4/3/2012 (‘China’s social ‘harmony’ more fragile than it appears’), the word ‘dyke’ appears in the first and eighth paragraphs. While the word is correctly used in its traditional sense, editors may want to use the spelling ‘dike’ to avoid any consternation among readers.”

Oh, for cryin’ out loud! The correct use of a word might cause “consternation” because it can mean something else in a different context? What, are we 12? Scratch that. My 12-year-old is more mature than that.

The language police; a shrinking population of readers; the dumbing down of discourse (if it can’t be said in 140 characters, does it, like, even matter?) — all signs of the creeping debasement of language. For a guy who makes his living and his art out of stringing words together with as much craft as I can muster, it’s more than a little discouraging.

Last week, a friend who is also a writer told me that he suddenly feels like “a man from another age.” No kidding. Nothing left to do but try to stem the tide. I feel like the little Dutch boy…

No! Don’t go there! It’ll cause consternation!

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Politics is a rough-and-tumble sport

It’s always tempting to think that things were better in the good ol’ days. Many of us decry the toxic partisanship that dominates our national political scene and worry that it’s trickled down to the local level, where debates turn into disputes and it gets ugly and angry.

Thing is, that warm remembered glow of collegial behavior and calm consensus is largely an illusion.

Politics has always been a rough-and-tumble sport — sometimes a blood sport. Going all the way back to the Adams vs. Jefferson presidential election, things were nasty, personal and mean. President Obama is no more despised than was FDR; Bush was no more excoriated for his war than were Nixon or LBJ for theirs.

Local politics has never been exempt. Heck, in some parts of the country, political and economic rivalries led to feuds and gunplay.

Sisters has had a couple years of rough stuff. Issue after issue that comes before the city council turns into a fight. But that’s not so unusual either. When the community was debating a sewer project in the mid-‘90s, that business got contentious and often mean-spirited. Tempers flared, feelings got hurt, a city councilor was recalled.

There have been any number of land-use battles, fights over water and homeowners association beefs over the years.

I’m not saying any of this is a good thing. Bitter fights usually end up being destructive to everyone involved.

But it’s important to understand that it’s only human to get your back up in a fight, to lose your temper sometimes, to be harsher than the situation really warrants. As long as there are human passions, they’re liable to get out of hand. As long as there’s a political arena, those passions will be played out there.

The trick is to learn to take a step back, take a deep breath, try to keep things in perspective and proportion. And remember that the other guy has his reasons and his own stuff to carry.

Jim Cornelius, Editor