Dan says…

Also soon to be found at a military BX near you: Special K, glow sticks and roofies. And a used double-turntable and a stack of trance music.

According to senior CNN reporter Mike Mount, the Plan B (levonorgestrel), morning after pill will become available worldwide in every military medical facility. Conveniently, it’ll be disguised as a 20-pack of mints.

IMR Coordinator Dick Aplenty says “this decision will make it way easier to keep our personnel on the battlefield mollified and fighting. We just pump ‘em full of Prozac and Special K, stuff their pockets full of birth control and bullets, then send them on their way.”

Coordinator Aplenty continued “…and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we’ve never had a fighting force this loose before. Morale’s at an all-time high.”

Jane and I actually talked about this topic by phone about a week ago, and it was fortunate it was by phone, otherwise this post would have been about hospital copays, insurance deductibles and unnecessary rectal exams.

My primary argument remains now what it was then: This. Is. The. Military. It’s not Wal*Mart, Good Vibrations and Johnny the Dealer rolled up into one. It’s the place where we give people guns and instruct them to kill other people. Or protect other people with their guns. All while not getting their shit blown up. Should the military really be stripping them naked and shoving their uglies together in the middle of all that gunplay?

…but Jane thinks…

Dan, choose 1 of the following to describe yourself: a) out of touch b) a repressed Midwesterner laden with Catholic guilt or c) someone practicing Socratic irony – a little too convincingly. I’m praying it’s C.

You are being willfully naïve if you think that the way to prepare or support a military during a time of war is to dump them in some godforsaken desert for YEARS at a time with nothing other than cold steel , a scratchy woolen blanket, and some MREs. I cannot believe that I am in the position here of the Patriot, while you are…I don’t even know what…proposing that we deny fighting men and women the same basic rights that other consenting adults have?

It doesn’t seem as if your objection here is to the morality (don’t even start with me, people, it’s completely none of anybody else’s business) of the morning-after pill, but rather the notion that the military should be acknowledging and responding to the simple fact that soldiers are going to have sex – should the lucky moment strike. Why is that wrong? They aren’t robots – although, there’s an idea – they are human beings, with physical and emotional desires, probably more in need of human contact and comfort than those of us here safe at home stateside. Should they not be able to buy tampons or Diet Pepsi? Those things aren’t necessary to blowing the enemy whoever the hell that is these days sky high. How about pillows? Nobody needs a pillow. Sure it’s NICE to have a pillow, but if you’re really tired, and I’ll bet those soldiers are, they’ll sleep without one. Playstation and Xbox, heck, television, computers, cds, ipods. Those things don’t have much to do with their mission, do they?

Or maybe your point is that we and by we, I mean you and Goody Brown from the old settlement in Jamestown, shouldn’t be facilitating sexual relationships at all unless they occur between married people at home in their own bed. And somehow NOT providing birth control is going to keep unmarried adults from having sex. In a war zone. When they are scared and lonely. And bored. And facing death on a daily basis. Right…that’s about as likely as turning up those missing WMDs and yellow cake uranium.

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New feature: Light reading to kick off the weekend. You like? Say so. You no like? Golden rule, people.

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• Press Sec. Robert Gibbs forgot he was performing at the White House, not the Laugh Factory. Grow up, Gibby.
• Khloe Kardashian announces she wants to do herself on film. The only real surprise here will come when people see she’s hung like a Clydesdale.
• Man hoping to earn Capital One points tries to buy crack w/ plastic. Calls police when car is stolen during drug deal.   I got nothin’. Can’t make this shit up.
• John Mayer says sex was like killing Vietnamese via airdrop.
• Environmental group wants you to stop having sex with animals. So you’re saying I should stop trying to grant my son’s wish for a centaur for his birthday?   Fucking killjoys.

And at Dan’s place this week:

• Dan was called a “punk” by his 2 year old son.
• Dan nearly went MMA in the parking lot of the local library.
• Dan was “Blah-blah-blah’d” by his 5 year old daughter.

Have a great weekend, Jane readers.

Jane says…

Professional sports are stupid.

This occurs to me last week as I’m reading an article about how Vancouver is prepping for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The organizers have made a conscious effort to mellow the whole thing out, certainly as compared to the over-the-top display of the Beijing Olympics. As a neighbor remarked, let’s just hope that American network television can keep their frothy fervor under control as well and work like hell to keep their jingoistic forced melodrama out of their coverage. Nevertheless, one of the aspects of the Olympic spectacle that we love so much is the fact that “regular people” work so hard for something they love. Nobody is much moved by Kobe Bryant’s victory on the Olympic basketball court or Serena Williams’ triumphs in Olympic Tennis. It’s the grit and humanity of the amateur athletes that makes us tune in and cheer our hearts out.

Professional athletes in this country are paid exorbitant salaries, and certainly, some of them work really hard…I couldn’t say with any conviction that playing football or baseball is worth millions, but I don’t discount the fact that most professional athletes aren’t just sitting back collecting paychecks. They work. The lure of the big money applies downward pressure on college athletics. College athletics have become a commercial monstrosity – contorting the college admissions process and making a mockery of the notion that college is for higher learning. Worse – the incentives and benefits big time college athletics promises applies downward pressure on high school athletics.

High school athletes, more and more, suffer injuries to their still-developing bodies in their quest to specialize their way into division 1 of the NCAA. Middle school aged kids begin at age 12 to overcommit themselves to out-of-school leagues and teams that usurp most of their “free” time. Elementary school students, as early as first grade, feel like they have to be at soccer or hockey or lacrosse practice three times a week until 8 pm in order to make that third grade “travel team,” because they’ve been told in no uncertain terms that they don’t stand a chance of playing the sport they thought they really enjoyed in high school if they don’t get really good when they’re 9.

And that’s just one reason professional sports have become stupid; this trickle-down pressure to make it to the show is idiotic, but it’s not the whole story.

Professional athletes used to be role models. These days, when the six o’clock news tells us that a pro running back or superstar golfer or record-setting slugger has been arrested for gambling/abusing animals/raping a groupie in a hotel room/juicing, we don’t even flinch. It’s not even news anymore. We expect that these overpaid and undereducated and egomaniacal athletes have taken their own good press too much to heart and believe that there are different rules for them because they are So Important.

Ten minutes of watching the Superbowl this year tells yet another story about why pro sports have ceased to serve much of a positive function in our culture. Actually, I’m not sure I was even watching a football game – more like clips of football jammed between endless advertising. When the halftime show is dubbed, officially, the Doritos Half Time Show, indicating that the painful performances and repetitive commentary, deserve its own corporate headline sponsorship, separate from the prominence of Anheuser-Busch and Dr. Pepper sponsorship in the Sun Life stadium in Miami. Less confetti, fewer aging rockers, and the need for so much money diminishes. The only thing that doesn’t decrease? Fans’ appreciation for the game itself. Make no mistake, pro sports are not about sports.

So what’s the value of athletics? Competition, perseverance, evolution of role models, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat…all that. But where is that in the obscene mess that has become Professional sports? The regular folk can’t even afford tickets, let alone the licensed gear so shamelessly hawked at every sporting event. The promise of a free education isn’t enough to keep an aspiring basketball star in school – not when there’s big money to be made in the short term by dropping out and going pro. Records marking phenomenal feats feature asterisks and footnotes to differentiate between who really did something noteworthy and who did it with the help of human growth hormone.

The beauty of the New Orleans’ victory was the human connection it inspired – everybody rallying behind a fallen but fighting city. It didn’t have much to do with Doritos.

…but Dan thinks…

Jane, I think you’re a victim of the 24-hour news cycle. I’m not here to defend the behavior of a few bad apples, but back in the good ‘ole days? Babe Ruth was Pacman Jones, Tony LaRussa and Deion Sanders all rolled up into one. Ty Cobb was the meanest motherfucker in sports and intentionally injured dozens of infielders in his career. The Stanley Cup hockey playoffs were called off one year because too many players were losing eyeballs. Which of course begs the question – how many is the RIGHT number of eyeballs to lose?

But news travelled slow back then. And the news was way more newsy back then, too. Reporting on things that mattered.

But lemme tell you about Jack Roosevelt Robinson. You may have known him as “Jackie.” In the 1947 season of Major League Baseball, Jackie debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was black *whispers*.

As the first player to break the color barrier, Robinson had to endure derision not only from opposing teams but from within his own locker room. Death threats descended like locusts to Robinsons locker, road hotel rooms and home. Yet he stood his ground and played, embodying the grace and dignity any of us would hope we could muster on just one of our best days.

And the country watched.

It watched baseball. It watched as a microcosm of the battle against segregation played out before it’s eyes. And it saw a talented, dignified black man start the decades-long process of breaking stereotypes. With every hit, every single he stretched to a double, every out he tallied in the field that Robinson made in the face of overwhelming, racist hatred, he started changing hearts and minds.

Without sports, without Robinson, white children and adults of that era may never have been exposed to a Black American or Black America, without the nearly requisite racism or prejudice.

And without Robinson and his impact on racism in America, ever so slowly lending confidence to Black America, eight years later maybe Rosa Parks doesn’t have the courage to refuse to ride at the back of the bus. And without Parks, maybe Tommie Smith and John Carlos don’t raise their gloved fists in protest at the 1968 Olympics.

To watch sports is to watch the history of our country unfolding before our eyes.

Like in 1973, a year after Title IX was passed, when Billie Jean King bitch-slapped Bobbie Riggs in three straight sets after he was cocking off about his superior manliness.

Or years later when King donned the flannel and stepped out of the closet.

Or in 1980 when a group of college kids played against a professional Russian hockey team at the Lake Placid Olympics and won, throwing an exclamation point onto the end of the cold war.

How about 1999? Women’s World Cup, when Brandi Chastain let the girls out for a look around.

Or when Michael Jordan won an NBA Championship shortly after his father was murdered? Or Brett Favre on Monday Night Football after losing his father to a heart attack?

And what about Magic Johnson? Contracted AIDS, retired, unretired, then retired again.

And Michael Phelps? Who wowed us with his fins, then disappointed us with his bong.

We watch the news to gather data points. Observe trends. Maintain our relative safety. But watching sports is how we learn how to live. It’s where we form our day-to-day opinions. Maybe you didn’t know how you felt about being within spitting distance of someone with AIDS until you saw Magic Johnson crashing boards with uninfected men. And remember the talking heads tittering for weeks and even months about women in sports when Brandi Chastain sent the girls out to party?

And going all the way back to Jackie Robinson, without sports, without spectating, maybe that portion of White America doesn’t see the courage of a single man fighting inside curveballs on “Free Bedsheet Day” at the stadium. And without that, maybe there isn’t a black NFL quarterback for another half century. Which means Rush Limbaugh doesn’t have the opportunity to talk about social engineering conspiracies and how Donovan McNabb is unfairly benefiting from his blackness, making most reasonable white people throw sheets over their heads (in shame).

And without all that, maybe we still think a black man isn’t smart enough to coach a football team. And then Superbowl XLI (41 for those of us who don’t count like the fucking Romans), the first to play host to TWO teams coached by black men never happens.

And without ALL OF THAT? Without watching sports, without seeing smart, stoic, courageous black men (Terrell Owens? You know there’s no way I’m fucking looking at you, right?)? Pretty damn hard to convince White America to vote for a black man as President. That’s right, I said it. Without Jackie Robinson? Without Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy showing the worst of White America that Black America is also smart and capable? There is no President Obama. Deal with it.

And here I am, about a thousand words in and I haven’t even talked about how sports teach our children how to compete. How to get a thirst for winning that can be translated to all the different languages of our lives.

And hello? Michele Obama just unveiled her pet project, the Let’s Move campaign, to get our fat, stupid children outside to play (was that out loud? You know I meant “our” in the most general sense, right? Not YOURS and MINE?). Play what? Well, just look at the website! There’s a nice little boy playing FOOTBALL. And why would he be interested in playing football? Why not cricket? Why not Jai alai? Because they suck, for one. But also, because this little kid’s heroes PLAY FOOTBALL. THAT HE WATCHES.

Kids watch sports. They go outside and emulate their sports heroes (hopefully the on-field stuff, not bitch-slapping Sally next door when he drops a handful of singles on the ground and Sally dives for them, I’m looking at you, Pacman) when they play. They get exercise, they get healthy.

And let’s not forget about the sick children. The ones stuck in hospital beds who can’t get out to play. They can get their IV’s inserted and bedpans changed during commercial breaks, and then during the action, for an afternoon, they can escape their pale semi-private rooms and root for their favorite players.

Like Charles Woodson. Who just gave two motherfucking million dollars to his alma mater to help in the construction of a new children’s hospital, and who regularly, quietly, under the radar, visits kids in cancer wards all the time in the hopes that it might give them a lift. Give them a reason to fight another day.

And then there’s the impact on the economy. Meh. You know what? Nevermind. If everything you just read isn’t enough to convince you that you should step away from the computer and watch some sports RIGHT NOW, you probably got winded even reading this. And you hate children. Which, can I say? SUPER FUCKING MEAN. What did the children ever do to you?