When news literally crosses the line

'Act of faith' costs track team a win, trip to state championships

Whoa, is that true?!! I sure hope not! I'm not religious, but this still seems wildly unfair. 

COLUMBUS, Texas -- An act of faith has cost an area track team a win and a chance to advance to the state championships.

So the headline was right after all? Wow! Absolutely outrageous and appalling! This isn't what America is about! See, this is what the Bill O'Reillys have warned us about all —

Though O’Connor cannot say why the student pointed, he says it was against the rules that govern high school sports. The rules state there can be no excessive act of celebration, which includes raising the hands.

Oh. Thanks for clarifying that, sixth paragraph.

So as it turns out, the team's disqualification was due to a technicality, not because track officials want to eradicate Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the Lamb from children's souls.

But as long as we're being spiritual, let's talk about spirit ... of the rules. Excessive celebrations are at best obnoxious, and at worst can start fights. I personally witnessed (and filmed) a brawl that began at the finish line of a sprint at an indoor college meet at McNeese University in 2000. It started when the winner of the heat made a gesture toward a runner-up, and quickly escalated into at least 20 people punching at each other. The mob shoved all the way back to the halfway point of the straightaway before officials could break it up. Rules against excessive celebration and taunting in any sport are meant to prevent such blowups. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, such rules are often so rigidly enforced that anything at all amounts to excessive. And suddenly, there's no difference between a runner basking in the immediate moment of triumph, and Terrell Owens. That saying about the letter of the law and not the spirit definitely applies here.

If anything here breeds outrage, it's how the officials define and enforce this rule (no raising of hands?). It is indeed sad that this team, which clearly won and otherwise did so legitimately, was denied their shot at state. I won't defend it with "rules is rules" either, because the rule (or at least its enforcement) leaves much room for interpretation. In that respect, I'm as outraged as the Christians who made this story viral.

But again, let's be clear. This is not an act of bigotry against Christianity.

It doesn't help matters that WFAA covered this awkwardly (to say nothing of the outrage sites that further butchered the details). The station covered the outrage more than it covered the facts, when its job is to clarify said facts for the outraged public.

Here's how I would have led off:

Track team's relay win overturned over gesture; state championship hopes dashed

COLUMBUS, Texas -- A finish-line gesture has cost an area track team a win and a chance to advance to the state championships.

This past weekend, the Columbus High School Mighty Cardinals had just won a boys' relay race when Derrick Hayes pointed up to the sky as he crossed the finish line. 

Many people, including Hayes' father, allege that officials objected to the religious nature of the gesture. However, ISD Superintendent Robert O’Connor says that track rules forbid any excessive acts of celebration, which includes the raising of hands.

Then I would have cited the rule, and (if any, and if time permitted) cited a past example of its use. I also would have asked officials, coaches and athletes if they were previously aware of the rule; for all we know, this is the first time anyone's ever brought it up. If the runners knew beforehand how strictly officials enforced the rule, well, that's also important. Reported this way, the focus is on the tangible controversy — what constitutes excessive celebration — and not the imagined one about religious persecution. 

Investigation of the rule is in the true spirit of the story. 

Sports Hate vs. Real Hate: It's no contest

Yesterday I blogged about the false equivalence between Jason Collins' self-outing and Tim Tebow's Christian crusade. I argued that Collins and Tebow actually seek polar-opposite aims — the former wants to make the hot-button issue of sexual orientation in sports irrelevant, and the latter aims to elevate a mostly irrelevant factor in sports to exalted status.

Another point I (and others) made is that Collins faces a much higher risk of reprisal for opening up than does Tebow. Defenders of the Jesus-loving journeyman insist otherwise, citing commentary from his plentiful haters as proof that persecution cuts both ways. If anything, they'll say, it's Tebow who has it worse, because he's just being a good Christian and not pushing an agenda like the other guy. Can't we just accept that both sides have it rough and go from there?

We absolutely cannot do that.

To explain why not, I'm going to use a sports analogy. But it's true of life in general.

Every true sports fan has within them something I call "sports hate." Such is what allows a rational, loving, functioning, taxpaying human being to call for professional athletes to hurt themselves and/or die in a fire on game days. Sometimes that rage is directed even at an underwhelming home team (guilty). Sports hate can be raw, visceral and vociferous, but it's also momentary. It has a specific context that keeps it rightfully boxed out of reality.

Take a random football fan I just made up named Blake the Barista. Blake, a Jets fan, sports-hates Tim Tebow. If you ask him why, he'll say, "Tebow really stunk up the Jets' depth chart. He was a mediocre passer who added little of value to a floundering offense. Also, I couldn't stand all the posturing. So he's a Christian? Big deal! I know tons of Christians. Maybe Tim should've pulled his nose out of his Bible a bit and studied his playbook a little more. Then I could deal with the hype. Anyway, good riddance to him."

Chances are, however, that Blake's sports hate doesn't translate to real hate. "Would I serve Tebow if he walked in here and wanted coffee? Of course I would. I might even tell my friends about it later. I'm sure he's a decent guy in person. I don't wish anything terrible upon him."

This sentiment, I think, is typical of sports fans who are also human beings. Eight years ago, I wrote a blog titled, "Why Brett Favre is scum." Even in that highly regrettable piece, I commended Favre for his wit. My insistence that he was scum was based solely on the fact that he helmed the Packers and they had just blown out my Saints. (I'd be tolerant of any dip-chewing rednecks in Saints uniforms, after all, including him.) Even then, though, if Brett had occupied my space, I'd be in awe of the guy and remember the experience always. Because sports hate is not real hate. Sports hate is pointless whining by irrelevant people (again, guilty). It's an inevitable aspect of any high-profile job or pastime.

Collins, on the other hand, is black and gay, a member of two groups that face very real hate all the time. People who have no inkling of Collins' career stats or presence on the court would be happy to spit in his coffee, call him a scumbag to his face or worse. Very little of the criticism I've seen against Collins this week has anything to do with his game — it's all about his announcement, which gave homophobes a new guy to hate. That's real hatred, and Collins refused to let its perilous potential keep him from being true to himself.

Tebow, to his credit, has also been true to himself. But he suffers far less in terms of innate hate. Were he on par with Roger Staubach, Reggie White, Randall Cunningham or other religious legends, Tim's religiosity would barely matter. But no matter how hard Collins plays from here on out, he will always be the gay NBA guy in a nation still coming to grips with homophobia. The difference is stark.

In general, Americans fighting for equal rights always have targets on their backs — real, literal targets at which violent people wish to aim. That must never be equated with either sports hate or the false martyrdom of those yanking back the bow.

When it was Mayday in America

Today is May Day. "Mayday" is also an international distress signal among aviators. It derives from the French "m'aider," which translates to "help me."

All three of these facts are relevant to the events of 10 years ago, when Commander George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier outside of San Diego and declared "Mission Accomplished" in the Iraq War. 

A week later, I celebrated my 23rd birthday. My sister, then 13, drew a cake on my birthday card that stretched out really, really long (to show that I was old). That length and all the candles on her drawing made the cake look like a battleship. Which makes sense in retrospect, because by Bush's logic, I should have been celebrating a far-off birthday. Perhaps with an actual, ultra-long, battleship-shaped cake, and while wearing an exaggerated codpiece. 

I vehemently objected to the war in Iraq from day one. I thought it was a potentially disastrous diversion from our mission in Afghanistan, and based upon dubious evidence. Early 2003 was a lonely time to think that. I got in arguments with everybody, even liberal family members, over it. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I didn't get swept up in war fever when everyone else did. One factor might have been embodied in a professor I had who, following the Republican sweep in the 2002 midterm elections, placed a sign on his office door that read, "REGIME CHANGE!" My conservative friends (and many liberals, to be fair) were equally enthusiastic about the imminent war. Psyched, even. I thought that was inappropriate, especially given the circumstances. War, like self-defense, has always struck me as a last-resort action that should never be cause for jubilation. 

All I felt was sadness. Sadness and dread. The invasion of Iraq seemed wrong. Not just for political and logistical reasons — but for every reason. And I felt at times like the only person who felt this way. Could I be wrong? I hoped I was, but I couldn't think of a scenario in which I would be, no matter how hard I tried.

(Greg Mitchell has compiled some choice quotes that tap into the mood of the time. Wow. Even I didn't remember that much unabashed fawning.)

By May 1, 2003, the sadness and dread had yielded to numbness. The war felt like it been raging for years, and yet it was only a couple of months in. That day — and this was despite staying up to date on daily war developments — the ceremony took me by surprise. Was Bush really declaring "Mission Accomplished" simply because Saddam Hussein had been expelled? And was he really wearing a flight suit and strutting like a cowboy pilot millionaire?

(This image completely ruined what had been one of my favorite movies, Independence Day, where Bill Pullman's President Whitmore personally flies in the final mission to destroy the alien saucers. Suddenly the fantasy seemed too close to home — and terrible — to enjoy. I couldn't watch that film for years afterward.)

At that point, I wasn't even accounting for my political distaste — this just seemed like a woefully early time to declare the mission accomplished. The fact that the war was immoral, based on lies and a dire setback for U.S. foreign policy barely factored into it. And even if the war was totally kosher and the mission really had been accomplished, how tacky was that celebration? Again, last resort, not first act.

Ultimately, it turned out the Iraq war was every bit the shameful exercise that this feisty and mostly inconsequential college student thought it was. I've never been happy to be right about that. I don't even feel it was that intuitive to predict its bad ending. Maybe it's just that we wanted it so badly to be true. For the U.S., Iraq represented the perfect foe — a frenemy we knew we could beat, and had done just enough wrong to justify military action, so who better to be a scapegoat for 9/11? Details strictly optional.

Think about how people would have reacted if President Obama ordered the same invasion, with the same result. Critics would been in arms. They would have demanded concrete evidence. Congress would have stalled funding. Obama would get blasted not just for the reckless excursion into sovereign affairs, but for strutting around in a flight suit and for his insistence to be called "Commander Obama." When he declared "Mission Accomplished," he'd have gotten reamed by all sides for declaring that nearly a decade too early. And his critics would all be correct.

It's too bad the people who decry Obama simply for being on TV had no problem with the previous president entering into elective war and treating it like his own large-scale game of Call of Duty. They were the ones who insisted that critics of the war were un-American, and actively cheered on an endeavor that anyone without flag-colored glasses could see would do more harm than good.

Ten years ago, Bush shouldn't have declared "Mission Accomplished" — he should have been saying, "Mayday!" We all should have been.

The difference between Collins and Tebow

Jason Collins is the not the first athlete to come out as gay, but he is the first professional male athlete to do so while still an active player. If anyone wonders why that's significant, I'll boil it down to its purest essence:

He's doing it while still in the game. On the court. In the locker room. In American pro sports, the last bastion of open, macho homophobia. Though attitudes toward homosexuality in sports have improved drastically in recent years, there's still a long way to go. Collins is the first to say, "This is what I am and have always been. I'm not a freak and people like me should not have to live in secret amid fear of reprisal from ignorant people. Now, let's play some basketball!"

Today I've seen a lot of cartoons, graphics, statuses, tweets and e-mails from critics making the same point as the image above — "Oh, sure, Collins can trumpet his homosexuality, but Tim Tebow professes his Christianity and it's this big hoopty-doo!" (Not a direct quote, probably.)

Here's the difference.

Collins came out so people realize that gay people play sports, and that they shouldn't be persecuted for it. Just as Jerry Lewis said his goal with the MDA Telethon was to end the need for the telethon, Collins revealed his sexual orientation to make it irrelevant. In both cases, they have to be made relevant so people can address the problems and move on.

Tebow, on the other hand, has made Christianity a major part of his image. It's the predominant religion on the planet, and certainly in America. Not one pro athlete in the U.S. experiences prejudice and suspicion on the field, sidelines or locker room for being Christian. It wasn't a personal and career gamble for Tebow to declare his religion; if anything, it was a sure bet to stardom. For his entire pro career, the quarterback has reigned atop a hype pedestal out of line with his abilities.

(To the degree that people do diss Tebow, it's for his hype or his play, which is universal among even the most beloved athletes. Collins, on the other hand, is likely to engender a new brand of hatred as a direct result of his announcement. So even the hate is different.)

To recap: Collins is risking his reputation, and possibly his safety, to ensure a future where no one cares about an athlete's sexual preference. Tebow took something that most athletes believe or accept on some level and made sure everyone cared about it. That doesn't make him a bad person, but neither is he Collins' trailblazing equal.

Unless Tebow becomes the first openly gay NFL player, that is. 

It'd be interesting to see who wants who to shut up then.

An unwelcome present for gifted students

A Louisiana state senator is calling for huge slashes in funding to the state’s Gifted and Talented education program via Senate Committee Resolution 23.

I'm pretty good with words, which is why Lafayette Parish placed me in the gifted program for 10 years. Such pernicious legislation compels me to spelunk deep into my expansive vocabulary for a suitable reaction:

Big shock.

Let’s be clear; this is not just about gifted students. Every single child deserves a quality education that plays to strengths and helps them overcome weaknesses. But too often they don’t get it, because adults choose to deny them reasonable and available resources. And yes, it is a choice — born of ultimately petty political squabbles rooted in hatred for the gubmint; outrage over the distinct lack of forced school prayer in the curriculum; and/or kowtowing to those who hold the keys and deeds to private and charter schools. Having a governor who is never more visibly agitated than when talking about educators also doesn’t help.

Too often, it seems, Louisiana children endure significant disadvantages in their schooling just so their elders can claim political victories. The repercussions of that can last generations, long after anyone remembers the short-term gains of gutting school funds. That is a crime.

I graduated from Lafayette High School in 1998. Even then, the perception was that public schools had been cut to the bone. But I worry that students with similar needs to mine (or any needs in general, or none) aren’t going to have it even as good as I did — at least after I stopped careening through the system.

Beginning just prior to my fourth birthday, I spent more than a year in Head Start classes because doctors thought I was developmentally disabled. The docs gave me toys to play with and they didn’t like how I played with them. They saw my overactive imagination as a learning disability. They saw my lack of interest in following their busywork directions as proof that I might not be able to even finish school.

By second grade, I was in the gifted program. The first day blew my mind. I recognized immediately that I was in a new kind of class, one that would challenge me in creative ways. I knew it wouldn’t be easy — and it wasn’t — but the challenges were in the material, not in understanding the approach. For the first time ever, I felt like I fit in. I couldn’t believe such a program existed. I'm pretty sure I cried.

Math made me cry for a different reason. Math was not why I was a gifted student. This was painfully clear to my teachers. Which brings me to another terrible proposal in 23: tying GT funding to math aptitude.

The yearbook caption is deceptive — we were taking a math quiz when this photo was taken. Mrs. Bush never had to lean over me impatiently during art time.

The moment my teachers were able to bump me down to advanced math, in sixth grade, they enthusiastically did so. I was OK with that. Beginning in middle school, gifted classes are basically a la carte, better matching the individual student’s abilities.

My gifted classes in high school included English, geography, general science, biology, civics, free enterprise, U.S. history and world history. Liberal arts is where I have always flourished. I have college degrees in journalism and English and have worked as a journalist, editor and performer. I credit my gifted courses with teaching me critical thinking and encouraging me to embrace my unique traits. Would I have learned those in a more mainstream, rigid class? It’s hard to say.

So I don’t like the idea that (what's left of) funding for such students would come down to math scores — after 5th grade, that would have probably excised me from the program. Lack of funding should never be a reason that a gifted student — or any student — is denied the opportunity to cultivate their skills.

The proposed changes are unnecessary, except to hinder public education in Louisiana. They further clarify what’s been evident for years: that state politicians care more about their financial interests than in investing in the future.

Though I’ll give them credit for trying to prevent brain drain by thwarting brain development in the first place. That’s creative.

Just Say No to SCR 23.

This makes me want to keep on driving

It's hard to decide what is stupidest about this newly viral image:

• That some people think it's real;

• That a lot of people desperately want it to be real;

• That people really think the state would approve such teabag verbiage on any sign, let alone a welcome one;

• That such a sign would be even fractionally legible at highway speeds;

• That a sentiment summarized as "I wish a mofo would" in any way reflects what makes Louisiana special;

• That the graphic artist couldn't resist a shoehorned dog whistle at the end — just in case you weren't sure where the writer of this sign stood on the political spectrum.

When asked why they love visiting Louisiana, most people will tell you the culture and the food draw them here. I'm not aware of anyone saying, "I like to visit because all the armed and standoffish conservatives itching to be heroes make me feel safe."

The day that does become a draw, is the day I zoom past the back end of this sign.

Today in old news

Politician says students who can't afford school lunch should have to work for it 

One day, in the distant future, when the U.S. recovers its economy and its marbles, Americans are going to be grateful they didn't live in this age. And one way they'll express this sentiment is by asking, "Can you believe some leaders wanted poor children to labor for their own school lunches?"

The idea that children should have to labor for the trappings of public education smacks of something bred in a vacuum-packed ivory tower — probably by a self-styled libertarian who was born an inch from home plate and thinks he chose the uterus that hit the triple. In his mind, poor people should start young in learning the lesson to not be poor.

I minored in political science in college. One of the characteristics of a political science student (and I'm not innocent) is insufferable ideological rigidity. It's very easy to sit in a classroom, study philosophies that jibe with what you believe and declare that such should be the unblinking law of the universe. These departments are valuable as incubators of thought; throwing shit on the wall to see what sticks requires walls, after all. This is where such rigidity belongs, because it's impractical in the real world.

Yes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. But does that mean children shouldn't have free lunches? Of course not. Our taxes can pick up the tabs for those. I don't mind. It seems as good a use of government funds as any. It's not really in anyone's interest to have kids starve — they can't learn as well, they get sick and we pay for the consequences one way or another. That problem doesn't vanish just because we think life can be governed like in an Ayn Rand comic book.

I expect that sort of mindset from young idiots. But not from people who have a chance at altering the law.

The problem isn't work ethic; it's that many of our politicians are still stuck in school. And they aren't learning anything.