Lady Wingnut Has Had It Up To Here With You Being So Mean To Foot-The-Ball

Here in the Wonkette Los Angeles bureau, we have been enjoying – or rather, “enjoying” – the recent addition to our local paper of the ravings of Charlotte Allen, one of those wingnut writers who constantly complains that women are destroying masculinity in America by making men emotional and dumb … you know, like women. And the latest attempt at feminizing our manly culture, the disparagement of professional football, has really chafed Allen’s nads. Let’s take a look at her caveman gruntings about it.

Allen is responding to Steve Almond, a writer who has publicly been working out his angst over his lifelong football fandom through a book and a series of editorials. Here, according to Allen, are his contentions.

Football is a contact sport, and contact sports result in injuries… At least football players don’t get killed in action…

Not true! Just last week a high school player died after taking a brutal hit. Granted, this is a rare event, and it has never happened in the NFL (though we remember a player for a Los Angeles Arena League team who died on the field after a hit a few years ago), but it does happen. Google! It is your friend!

Almond makes much of an actuarial report prepared as part of a settlement in a suit brought by injured players against the NFL… But, as NFL lawyer Brad Karp explained to the New York Times , the estimate purposely exaggerated the number of future injuries in order to ensure that the settlement amount would be large enough to cover all contingencies.

What, a lawyer for the NFL tried to make the people suing the NFL look like liars? Has his state bar association been informed of this?

Almond focuses on two -- count 'em -- incidents of violence involving NFL players:   former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s video-captured slugging of his then-fiancée (now wife) Janay, and Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson’s indictment for allegedly beating his 4-year-old son bloody with a switch… But the NFL has already suspended Rice for life and is considering discipline against Peterson.

Five seconds with Google will tell you these are far from the only incidents of domestic   violence perpetrated against women by football players just in the last few months. Furthermore, Rice received an indefinite suspension, which is not the same thing as being “banned for life.” Guarantee you the minute some other team wants to sign him, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will publicly announce Rice has taken anger-management classes or something and been “rehabilitated.”

And let’s not forget that Rice was first suspended for only two games, receiving the harsher sentence only after the actual videotape of him punching out his then-fiance became public and embarrassed the NFL.

Furthermore, neither of the above incidents had anything to do with playing football. Rather, they are among the thousands of incidents of domestic violence and child abuse that unfortunately occur on a regular basis throughout the country and usually among men who are not professional football players.

Men who are not millionaire role models publicly representing a multi-billion dollar enterprise that is popular worldwide. Other than that, yeah, it’s totally the same thing.

Football -- surprise, surprise -- is a male game. It’s basically, like other team sports -- and men gravitate toward team sports -- a version of war. It affords opportunities for heroism (the “courageous” part) because men venerate heroism as a positive channeling of the aggressiveness and competitiveness that are part of masculine nature. It’s “brutal” because it’s played by men, who are generally exponentially stronger than women. It’s also enormously complex strategically, which appeals to men’s facility for spatial reasoning. It’s chess (another overwhelmingly male game) with live bodies.

Derrrrr, football manly sport. It too much thinking for dumb lady brain. Dumb lady not understand Cover 2 defense and zone blitz and complex strategy. Men strong, hit each other. It nature. Lady weak, not have spatial reasoning skills. Lady-man Steve Almond not like manliness, because he is lady-man. Get sand out of vagina, lady-man Steve Almond!

We look forward to the L.A. Times continuing its downward spiral into irrelevance so we can have more conversations with our friends here that begin with the sentence, “Remember years ago, when the Times had interesting writers and didn’t suck?”

[ Los Angeles Times ]