WASHINGTON -- Tom Wolfe has done it again. He has written a
novel full of the blood and gore, the preposterosity and pomposity
of the age. I Am Charlotte Simmons is about the excesses
of college life. It is particularly good on the imbecility of
college sports, specifically basketball. Wolfe depicts fans that
are witlessly agog about the players. And he depicts players
teetering on the brink of megalomaniacal madness. It is a vastly
amusing book and highly instructive. Now out of nowhere the
National Basketball Association has come forward to give Wolfe's
book a tremendous boost.
Last week's mayhem during and NBA game between the Detroit
Pistons and the Indianapolis Pacers was populated with fantasticos
that only Tom Wolfe could dream up. In fact he already has. Many of
them are right there in the pages of I Am Charlotte
Simmons. Wolfe even has the bizarre rap music that one of last
week's NBA rampagers adores done to delightful effect. I personally
sing his songs in the shower -- Wolfe's, not the rampager's. You
will too.
But back to the mayhem of last week -- it was not only in the
NBA. As if to remind us of Wolfe's college-centered novel, the
beasts on the field at a Clemson vs. South Carolina football game
also gave themselves over into a free for all against each other,
the police, and any innocent fan who got in the way.
Actually the mayhem in Detroit was more spectacular and more
Wolfean. There the fans were not innocent. Some heaved drinks and
other materials at players, players who were already acting up.
That inspired the players to act even more egregiously. They
charged into the stands, cold-cocking fans and getting more debris
showered down on them. People were hurt, but so far as I could see
from the tape no one was very badly hurt, which is odd. Some of the
punches thrown by the NBA "stars" looked pretty powerful. Is
professional basketball going the way of professional wrestling
with more theater than muscle?
The mayhem in Detroit probably had a few innocent victims, but
from the tape I saw it appeared that all sides were in the wrong.
The fans acted like animals. The "stars" acted like animals. Even
officials seemed ignoble. In suspending the players NBA
Commissioner David Stern declared, "The line is drawn, and my guess
is that won't happen again -- certainly not by anyone who wants to
be associated with our league."
Well, good luck Commissioner Stern, but my guess is that this
sort of anarchy will indeed continue not only in the NBA but in
collegiate sports such as football and basketball. The reason is
that civilized standards of sport have been suspended for so long
that they have been forgotten.
The "fans" I saw in Detroit had no idea what is properly
expected of spectators at an athletic event. They are not the
participants, and frankly they should only be marginal to the
event. They are watching an athletic event, not participating.
Their cheers might hearten their team and dispirit their team's
opponents, but the "fans" are not the athletes competing. In fact
the potty lumps of humanity that I saw taking the punches from the
NBA's finest did not look as if they would pass for athletes at a
tiddlywinks tournament.
The athletes that rampaged in last week's football game and the
NBA game also are completely oblivious to the standards of fair
play and sportsmanship that govern sport at its best. This is
because neither in college sports nor in professional sports are
such values promoted. Doubtless there are coaches and athletes who
strive to make things better, but they are overwhelmed by the
idiotic coaches and athletes who spread the poppycock of "win at
any price." Among other things sports, at least sports as conceived
by the ancient Greeks who began organized sports, was about noble
values, "the virtues" as the Greeks called them. Winning was prized
but only if the rules were adhered to. The fans and the athletes
who rampaged in Detroit would find such talk epicene, if they knew
what epicene means.
Well, tough guys who think they win by thwarting the rules ought
to take their game out to Iraq or Afghanistan, where the play is
rough too. There the tough guys who make their own rules, of
course, are not on our side. They are very rugged, but time and
again they have been getting beaten by the tough guys who do play
by the rules, the tough guys that represent the "Coalition
forces."
topics:
Sports, Iraq
