Thugs R Us

   One afternoon many years ago, I had played hooky from work to catch the latest action movie.  Only a few people were in the theater -- all slackers like me, I assumed.
    At a climactic moment, the hero had an especially vile bad guy in the sights of an enormous handgun. With a squint and a growl, the good guy delivered his signature line: "Do ya feel lucky punk?  Well, do ya?"
    In one of the theater's forward rows, a man leaped to his feet and pumped his fists in the air. "Shoot the bastard," he shouted,  "Kill him!  Kill him!  Kill him!"
    In the years since, I've thought of that episode when listening to rounds of a perennial debate:  Do our attitudes shape our entertainment, or vice-versa?  Did the movie inflame my fellow slacker?  Or did the movie-makers have him in mind when they framed their offering for an audience?
    I've thought about that episode in connection with pornography.  I've thought about it in connection with the dreadful lows of reality television. And I've thought about it lately in the uproar over incidents of domestic violence among professional football players.
    If we consider only the statistics of the football thing, the incidents were few and isolated.  So, what explains a wave of reaction that has reached  all the way to Congress?   I think the explanation is this: Professional football is a haven for thugs, and the fact is widely known.   Thugs do not typify the men who play professional football.  But they are plentiful enough, and they are protected.
    An appetite for games is elemental in human nature. Children learn through play. Adults are restored by it. The late journalist and social commentator Walter Kerr argued that the word "recreation" means precisely what its component parts say: RE-CREATION.
    An instinct for sporting competition also is human.  We are naturally curious to know whose eye is keener, whose horse faster, whose arm stronger. Communally organized sporting competition comes down to us from antiquity. The scope of it would appear to grow in direct proportion to the availability of disposable time and money.  Thus the extremes of organized sport in today's America demonstrate the levels of extravagance that a fabulously wealthy society is able and willing to support.
    The barons of professional football -- the team owners -- are selling two commodities. One is entertainment in the form of performance by superior athletes. And a fine athletic performance is gratifying to watch. It reminds us that the human body and brain working together are capable of performing marvels.  Competitive sports can indeed have something to say to us about human skill, teamwork, perseverance, even courage.
    The owners' second commodity for sale is victory. And this, I think, is the party drug that begins to cloud our judgement.  We feel the better competitor should win, yes. We feel that winning is a token of merit, yes.This much is part of us as humans. But professional athletes who consistently win make more money. They enjoy more fame. And so, some of them begin to value winning even by means that have nothing to do with athletic skill. They resort to violence and intimidation. The ethic goes beyond winning the game toward beating -- in the full sense of the term -- the opponent.  Some players try to stack the deck of competition by injuring key players on the other side. The end not only justifies the means, it pays handsomely. And it pays those closely associated with the winner as well.
    We all know this.  We know that the sleek young wife beater in the pricey wardrobe is cruising through life on money that a great many of us have been ever so glad to pay him.  Thus I think that  the surge of reaction to recent events rises from the fact that in our heart of hearts we are not surprised. We are not surprised that men who display an aptitude for fan-financed violence display a taste for personal violence as well.
    As a dilettante follower of professional football, I am culpable, too.  And I was, after all, in that theater years ago to see a movie whose character I knew full well when I walked in. If I was not on my feet shouting murder, I do remember thinking that the punk deserved whatever he got.
    Thus we have professional football in 21st Century America: Human nature undergirded by societal wealth so lavish that average men and women can afford to spend thousands in pursuit of a game.  The owners' cartel -- The National Football League -- now announces that it will develop stronger rules about off-the-field behavior. With wetted finger aloft, the owners' kept regulators will weasel toward "reforms" until the wind of public opinion no longer offers to reach damaging strength.
    Clearly we do not feel, in the aggregate, that all of this amounts to mortal sin. If we did, presumably we would change our ways. But it is a shabby thing. And surely the lords of the sport could better refrain from riding their privilege to the very outskirts of decent limits.