What We Need To Learn From The Jovan Belcher Tragedy

It is time to talk about some hard realities in America today.

Obviously, what happened yesterday in Kansas City is a tragedy by the classic definition of the word.  The not-so-obvious tragedy which is going to unfold in the near future is that the deaths of the individuals involved here will not be remembered properly, nor will the lessons we need to learn as a society be learned,  because this murder/suicide will be used by those with various agendas to promote whatever cause they have.

If you doubt that, watch while I do it myself. The irony in that isn’t lost on me, because for starters, it isn’t irony.  Its more like “fighting fire with fire.” At least I’m willing to admit it.

Go back to the Dave Duerson situation. The story of that suicide quickly became a rallying crying for so many people.  Some people used it as proof football is dangerous game with long-lasting physical effects (duh?) Even Duerson’s family tried to turn it into a payday.  Twitter exploded with all sorts of stuff; there were the sick jokes, followed by the subsequent phony sympathy/moral outrage, followed by the opportunists.

As I knew it would, the path of the Jovan Belcher story is following the same trend.  See, I’ve been waiting since the Duerson tragedy to run a little experiment with a similar situation.  Admission number one; I’m an opportunist.  That goes hand-in-hand with “blogger.”

To launch my experiment, I tossed out a “joke” that was most assuredly in poor taste.  It was designed to draw responses, which it did.  Admission number two; I’m an insensitive douchebag. That also goes hand-in-hand with “blogger.”

To be honest, I don’t really care about the so-called jokers and the opportunists; not because I just played that role, but because at least they are the ones who are easy to see what they are.  You can’t say the same for the “phony sympathy/moral outrage” crowd. They are so full of their own self-absorbed bullshit that you need to smoke them out in order to see what hypocrites they are.

As awful as it seems, tragedies which hit emotional hot-buttons are the best place to do just that.  I didn’t make that rule, but I’m going to use it. Again, that makes me an opportunist, but unlike the people I’m about to call out, at least I’m honest.

For starters, here’s the “joke” I tossed out as a pure troll-job.

“Things are so bad for the Kansas City Chiefs now the players are literally shooting themselves.”

As you would expect, in short order I was deluged in reponses from all three aforementioned classes. I got “jokes” far more offensive than anything I said.  I got at least 50 exhortations for suicide prevention awareness. Most most importantly, I got a boatload of “phony sympathy/moral outrage;” so much so that I had to break it into categories, each more full of shit than the last.

1) The “phony sympathizers”

The common trait in the messages from this group was along the lines of “we need to focus on the families of these victims.” While that’s a true statement, it happens to rest on a bullshit platform. Whether you want to admit it or not, America is a celebrity-driven culture which has such a need for celebrity-based entertainment that not only has it made celebrities out even the most underachieving athlete (Mark Sanchez, anyone?), we also manufacture celebrities for literally no other reason than to sate our need for celebrities (insert Kardashian here).

Go with the Sanchez thing for a minute.  Remember before the ding on him was that he sucks as a quarterback? Remember when Sanchez’ exposure was all about whom he might be huddling with (see examples here, here, and here).  Face it, as a society we don’t give a shit about the humanity of celebrities; their foibles exist for our entertainment.  In America today, part of the cost of fame is your humanity.

You don’t have to like that, but you need to accept it, because it is the main reason you will never get me to believe any of the people who blew me up yesterday ever gave a damn about some previously unknown player on arguably the worst team in the NFL.

Speaking of which, I’m waiting to find out what sort of warning got missed by the Chiefs on the road to this tragedy.  Guys don’t just wake up one morning and decide to kill the mother of their child and themselves…there’s ALWAYS warning signs. The question will be were they simply missed, or were they ignored because the NFL treats the non-star players like disposable parts?

2) The Misspelled Re-Tweeter

If I had a dollar for every one of these I got, I’d have a hell of a lot more dollars than I had yesterday.  I’m not kidding, had I printed out all the “R U Serious? RT” I got yesterday, I could wallpaper my house with them.

Now ask yourself a question.  If you read something on Twitter that pisses you off, what really are your options?

• Ignore it and move on with your life; after all, it’s only Twitter.
• Send the author a reply telling him what an insensitive asshole he is (by the way, those of you who did that should not consider yourself the subject of this rant, at least you are honest).
• Re-tweet the offensive message so the whole world can see how offended you are.

If you picked the “re-tweet” option, then ask yourself this question: Why would you do that? After all, you are just spreading the same words that made you react, so in effect aren’t you simply contributing to the problem? Oh, wait, how could I forget…you get to staple your name to it.  In other words, the indignant re-tweeters are more interested in using that which they consider offensive to bolster their own visibility.  Don’t even try to tell me that isn’t some sort of fucked up nuclear-powered  narcissism.

3) The “C’mon Man” Guy

Yeah, I know… I was as shocked as you are that there were as many of these as there were. If you thought the misspelled re-tweeters were pathetic, how messed up is it that the only way you can express your bullshit moral outrage is using a catch-phrase from the flatheads currently employed by ESPN?

Time for the aforementioned hard reality. When you are blantantly hypocritical about that which you consider to be offensive, don’t be surprised when your phony outrage rings hollow.  Not only is what was likely a preventable murder/suicide a tragedy, it is also a tragedy that it takes a tragedy to point this out.

Go ahead and call me all sorts of names if you will for saying it.  At least you are acknowledging it.

About J-Dub

What your view of sports would be if you had too many concussions

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