What the World Really Needs: More Head Injuries

By now, everyone has heard of the sad case of Jovan Belcher, but in case you haven't, I made a link to it.  He's the Kansas City Chiefs Linebacker who killed himself and his girl friend yesterday, though-- unfortunately-- not in that order.


Seemingly within minutes after the player involved was identified, the Internet opinions blossomed. I caught this one by Saturnine Films:

The youtube anchor (yanchor?) has an opinion about this incident. No, wait he has an opinion about head injuries. No, actually he has an opinion about the  WWF. Wait, maybe it's about accountability. In a final twist, it turns out his real opinion is about how suicide is not really selfish, and those wanting to kill themselves should be allowed to go ahead without any interference or guilt trips from our oppressive culture. It's a dizzying three minutes, though not incoherent.

This was all anticipatory, a preemptive counter-argument argument to all those voices he knows he's going to hear.Once my shell shock wore off, I was awed. I've never seen so many barbaric proposals stuffed into so little time, for something that hasn't happened. Limbaugh takes three hours to do what the yanchor did in three minutes.

First, nobody had any problems with the ethic that athletes take risks of injuries, until concussions were discovered to have far worse long term effects than anybody imagined. This may mark me as old, but I remember when blows to the head and concussions were considered light comedy:

NFL rules have changed since those days.

A person looked funny, they staggered around, they acted incoherently, just insert a bonk and tweeting birds sound effects, and the crowds ROTF, a bit like what a kick in the nuts is today.

Seriously, though, head injuries are a different order of catastrophe than other ones. They can change who you are. Nobody had any problem with athletic risk before recent medical discoveries revealed how degenerative concussions could be. Now that the long term effects have been discovered, athletes may be made to take responsibility. However, what about the athletes who played before any of this was known? When the NFL encouraged harder hits? What about in the days of Astroturf, when players performed on a surface that was a little more than a shag carpet stretched over concrete? These are the questions that need to be settled.

Then he talks about how the WWF has been ruined because a wrestler with an alleged head injury killed himself. Is the yanchor really suggesting we must have more injuries so he can be entertained? Professional wrestling is already brain damaging for people who watch it, excuse my snobbery. No accident it was depicted in Mike Judge's highly entertaining comedy, Idiocracy, as the chief idiot's vocation. He actually says, not in these words, that people should suffer physical brain damaged so wrestling wouldn't be such a waste of his time.

I have a suggestion: read a book instead. You employ writers instead of wrestlers and writer's don't damage brains. We improve them.

I had an argument months ago on the Democratic Underground (I know, I should put those arguments here) after somebody posted we had become just like Rome due to our fixation on violent entertainment. My counterargument was, no we haven't: the Romans actually killed people for entertainment, whereas we go through great pains to simulate death in movies. Saturnine's spiel  shows we're not very far away after all. I like to think, just some of us aren't.

(Rome had it's form of violent entertainment for about 500 years before it fell. Our country isn't even 240 years old. Just saying there's a few myths about why Rome fell.)

Then he shouts an opinion, Idiocracy-style: accountability. By this, he means that employees  must be held accountable because they needed a job, but employers aren't accountable they only offer jobs under unsafe conditions. In an employer-employee relationship such as pro-sports, why would the yanchor demand accountability only for one side? Doesn't the owner and league choose to take risks when he ventures into a business, just as the player does when he chooses to play? It's called business risk. He doesn't have to yell accountability: it was never ignored, it's what's being determined.

I've heard right wingers complain about all the lawyers and law suits. It may be an annoyance, but in fact, you look at history, such as the Middle Ages, and the law was very complex, the jurisdictions were mind-boggling. It employed a lot of lawyers. Conservatives should have no complaint from the historical  standpoint. Once case law goes a certain direction, as in allowing lawsuits against sports leagues for head injuries, there are only two ways to correct. Have a judge rule against the precedent (not very likely), or agitate for Congress and legislatures to straighten it out.

Therefore, Saturnine, I suggest you organize with your friends and write Congress telling them that we need more head injuries so we can be entertained. If that phrasing makes you uncomfortable,  perhaps you can realize why it isn't being done already and why it won't be done. Same with playground injuries. Just write your legislature and tell them we need unsafe playgrounds, those that will injure a certain amount of kids per year so they'll learn what you mean by accountability.

Are you surprised parents haven't done this yet? This is why people always complain about the so-called lack of accountability, but they will never do anything about it, because they immediately find out how wrong the are if they ever try.

Saturnine then ends by giving his opinion about suicide: everyone should be able to do it if they want to. Like all forms death, suicide is irreversible.  He apparently thinks that a distraught, mentally ill person who isn't in charge of his or her own faculties should be allowed to make an irreversible decision that usually will greatly affect other people. This is not always the case. I think there are times where suicide isn't selfish, where it's justified by the circumstances (see Hitler, the bunker). However, among all suicides, those are the people who are least likely to be dissuaded by the selfishness argument. They will succeed anyway. We shouldn't make the mortality rate higher among other types of suicide just to make it easier for people who aren't responsible for their actions, and those who have responsibilities and are connected to other people who will take collateral damage from their decision.

I shouldn't be amazed that he wouldn't be aware of this. Not from a guy who pines for the days when the WWF was "real" entertainment.

(I'm way over my time writing this, so I haven't proofed it yet. Excuse the errors, please.)