Sunday, October 21, 2007

Men nearing the end?

As I sit and watch NFL football I begin to realize what is wrong with American society...MEN.

I grew up watching football and playing a bit of it as well. It has become our national pastime, an institution if you will. This morning I turned on the TV and decided to treat myself and watch the game after some exercise earlier in the day. Usually it's torture to watch my Cardinals but I figure they're playing Washington so we may have a shot. During the pregame B.S. I caught a quick glimpse of the Washington Redskins marching band. Yes, apparently the Redskins have a band. I'm not sure if it is a full marching band but there were some guys playing trumpets and marching along the field. What caught my eye was the fact that these men were in full head dress and dressed like native chiefs. The men racially appeared to be anything but native. What is amazing is that it is 2007 and we STILL have a team in our nations capital call the Washington Redskins
. What's even more disturbing is that we still dress up people to march around a field in some Halloween costumes to entertain men. Why don't we have the Atlanta Africans while we're at it. We can dress up some guys in black face and give them loin cloths to wear. Maybe we could have the Phoenix Mexicans and give them sombreros and thick mustaches. We seem to love false history and stereotypes.


I criticize men for this because men created teams like the Redskins and the Cleveland Indians. Look at the Indians logo sometime, it's fucking ridiculous. Next time you're chanting at a Braves or Florida Seminoles game think about how absurd it is. Nothing like mocking the faith of a culture from whom you stole their land and conducted genocide against. Better yet, you're doing it at an athletic event and you named your god damn team after them.



Being a man it gets a bit old observing the ignorance of other men. That's why it was refreshing to see a few years back a group of Native students in Colorado flip the script on the man. They decided to name their
intramural basketball team The Fightin' Whites. Everythings gonna be all white was their slogan. They even had a couple of mascots. One was a Yosemite Sam look a like and the other was a 1950's clean cut white man. I thought it was a brilliant move. Maybe during half time they could mock Christianity.


Men are oblivious because they can be. It's a man's world and with that comes privilege. The privilege is that we are rarely questioned about our choices and there are a different set of standards we have to follow. In many cases this is a white man's world. Don't get me wrong, all men have privilege but white men have a whole other level of privilege. There is a reason we don't see a team called the Fightin' Whites. Sure we have the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame but let me quickly point out the obvious. First, Notre Dame is a Christian university. Christianity is the dominant faith in this country. It is a Catholic university which is the largest sect of Christianity. Both of these affiliations come with privilege. The mascot is a leprechaun/shamrock, a fictional character mind you, who represents the Irish. The Irish were at the bottom of the food chain when arriving in America but like all other European immigrants they eventually assimilated into the white race. Obviously 43 white male presidents in a row and a history of law makers and laws created for white men by white men has given us more than just a few privileges. So when you try to compare the Fighting Irish with the Redskins it becomes pathetic.

The problem with all of this is the fact that men are really no longer needed. We have enough sperm frozen to last generations, so that really eliminates the main basic need for men. Think of all the major problems in the world. Most of them can be attributed to men one way or another. It's not like women would need protecting if men were gone.

I believe that nature has a way of selecting what it needs and eliminating what it doesn't need or what is harmful to nature itself. If men continue to be the problem it wouldn't surprise me if the end of men is near. Problems like war, prison rates, crime, violence, pollution, genocide, murder, rape, hunger, and practically every other major issue can be directly traced back to men.

Well boys it's time to pony up and become real men. The men we are portraying now have obvious flaws. What we are doing is not working. We are broken and we may want to start listening to women. My wife is a brilliant women and has more strength than any person I know. I have tried to listen to her and I have learned about what it takes to be a decent human being. So quit worrying about what your boys think and start listening to the women in your lives. Unfortunately most of us have convinced each other that we're superior to women but like everything else up to this point we were wrong.

1 comment:

Cactus Pix said...

I agree 100%... Ironically I was watching the same Cards game today and had the same thoughts then and a few nights ago during the Cleveland/ Boston game. As an African American, I know that I would be livid if there was a team named the Jigaboos, with that stereotypical cartoon from the late 19th/ early 20th Century dipicting a character with a blackface, big popping eyes and ridiculously thick lips.

I heard the same kind of mentality, twisted thinking back in 2003 when Governor Napolitano first proposed changing the name of Squaw Peak Parkway to Piestewa Peak Parkway after the fallen US Army soldier, Lori Piestewa. The outcry of tradition, "it's always been called Squaw Peak, why change it." When it was brought up that the word Squaw was considered offensive to Native Americans and that was glossed over. Thanks to Janet's determination, it was changed. But I notice that it is rarely called that now, it is just refered to as the 51...another blog topic I guess...