Halftime Was a Downer

Saturday, a guy killed his girlfriend, then made a show of ending his own life in front of a bunch of folks. It’s horrible and senseless, but because he happened to be a guy who got paid gobs of money to play a game, it became national news. At times like this, we need pretty people to tell us what to think. As we know from such luminaries as Bono and Janeane Garofalo, popular entertainers are the most qualified to do this.

Thing is, they don’t know much about football, so we need a guy who gets paid gobs of money to talk about the people who get paid gobs of money to play the game. Enter Bob Costas. He has a truly epic toupee, but he’s not much of a deep thinker. When he decided he had to say something on the matter, he chose to quote Jason Whitlock, another guy who gets paid gobs of money to blog about…well, you get the drift.

Since the writer in question (and by extension, Costas) chose to blame guns, the whole thing turned into a burbling crockpot of ermagherd.

Whitlock’s statement that concerns most people is this bit:

How many young people have to die senselessly? How many lives have to be ruined before we realize the right to bear arms doesn’t protect us from a government equipped with stealth bombers, predator drones, tanks and nuclear weapons?

The government has predator drones, so I should just relinquish my guns? Oh, that’s comforting.

Whitlock’s contention utterly falls apart through his own words, however.

Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.

Perhaps I’m just not pretty or athletic enough, but I can’t follow that argument at all, and neither can Whitlock. For all his concern, he describes football as a game of violence twice in the same paragraph, and he muses that the shooter’s actions will be scrutinized through the “lens of concussions and head injuries.” You think maybe those things might be the factors in unreasonable and aggressive behavior?

Naaaaaah.  Let’s blame guns. Like that’ll fly in football country.