Zentropy

As the Colts look to go to 4 and OH! this weekend, I find them flying suspiciously under the radar for a defending Super Bowl champion. Why?

Well, if you’ve seen any NFL analysis shows this year, and I’m guessing you’ve seen at least one, chances are the analysts talking heads were talking about the Patriots going undefeated.

Yes, three weeks into the season, and three wins over three NFL teams that suck, and the prophets of football have deemed them unbeatable. They’ve also deemed Mike Vick worthy of a social discussion delving into the racial divide, Coach Mike Gundy an unprofessional nut, and Eli Manning out for at least a month. Oh, wait, he’s only got a bruised shoulder and played last week? Our bad.

So, you may have gathered by now that the Colts are flying under the radar because ESPN is busy promoting more sensationalistic, entirely opinionated, quasi-sports-journalism. With no competitor to keep them honest, ESPN has, over the years, been building an almost entirely opinion-oriented programming slate, capped a couple years ago with the show Pardon the Interruption. Even the shining star of the network, SportsCenter, has become bloated beyond belief with washed up former players and obscure opinionated journalists each offering their two cents on the most mundane things happening in the sports world. Remember last year’s daily 10 minute segment on Terrell Owens? Does it smell like this year’s daily 10 minute segment on Michael Vick?

One of the hosts of PTI, Mike Wilbon, a writer for the Washington Post, went on the Mike Tirico Show a couple days ago and seemed to insinuate that the journalist getting reamed by Coach Gundy was falling into the “blog” mentality of writing opinion and secretly whispering unsubstantiated half-truths to the masses, in the hopes of making a name for one’s self. Here’s what Wilbon actually said on that show:

“Yes. I do buy it. And I have gone after some of our younger staffers at the Washington Post to say I don’t want to read this again. That’s not what we do. Umm, you know everybody….the notion of blogging scares the hell out of me Scott, and…..this is why. There’s no accountability….stuff isn’t edited. It just goes out there as gospel. What it is is opinion, there’s way too much rumor….”

And this is why I have started to secretly long for a competitor to come along and squash ESPN. This is a man who was writing nice pieces for WaPo a few years ago, and has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity because of his tough, in-your-face demeanor and frank OPINIONS spouted on PTI. Does he even realize over half of ESPN’s content is opinion-based garbage? Blogs SHOULD scare you, Wilbon. They’re giving people like me, who are sick of the same junk shoved down our throats everyday, an opportunity to find something BETTER. And yes, there are bloggers out there who are better journalists than those employed by ESPN or the Washington Post.

He should’ve revised his statement to say “…the notion of blogging scares the hell out of me Scott, because let’s face it, they’re a lot wittier than we are, and just as accurate”.

Every day on ESPN, we’re subjected to opinion after opinion. Instead of televising sports, or maybe putting on some old-school programming like the Celebrity Skeet Shoot (remember those? just awesome…), we get a hundred sports reporters from around the country, espousing trade rumors and whispering of locker-room unrest. All of them blatantly homer-istic, and few of them you ever hear about again. Oh, the writer from Boston thinks the Red Sox will win the World Series (I’m looking at you, Sports Guy)? Chris Mortensen says Eli Manning will be out for a month? Put it in the bank! It’s gold, Jerry!!

Personally, I’d like my sports news to come in three flavors. Game recaps, box scores, and ONE opinion piece. Honestly, I can do without Shannon Sharpe or Deion Sanders’ or Terry Bradshaw’s opinions, since they’re mostly straw-man arguments and semi-retarted babbling anyway. Don’t even get me started on Mark May. I can handle PTI once a day, but could care less about Around the Horn, Rome is Burning, etc. I enjoy finding sports blogs because they are specific to certain teams or sports, and a fair amount are loaded with humor or satire, which are sorely lacking in the ESPINION shows.

Give me a half-hour SportsCenter, a half-hour of Celebrity Skeet Shoot, and fill up the rest with live sports. If I want someone’s opinion, I’ll ask for it.

Well, Carson turned 4 weeks old today, and officially a month old on Thursday. The time is absolutely flying by, which is amazing considering we haven’t slept. But it’s a good lack of sleep! Anyway, here are a few photos of the little guy.

So last night I was reading an article on Indystar.com about the reaction of a pastor to the city’s consideration of putting foot-sinks in the Indianapolis Airport for Muslims. If you don’t already know, Muslims are required to wash their feet before prayer. Now the pastor had, unfortunately, lost a child to the war in Iraq. His response to the foot-sinks was the classic “we’re at war with Muslims. Why should we cater to our enemy?”. Now, his response didn’t surprise me. However there are two issues to which the pastor is speaking. The first is that we are at war with Islam. The second is that we should not be using tax dollars to appease one specific religious group.

To me, the second issue is cut and dry. We have separation of church and state in this country (well, maybe not so much anymore, but we used to), and unless the Catholics are getting holy water dispensers in city hall, the Muslims should not be getting foot sinks in the airport. The citizens of the city should certainly not be paying for something like this.

The first issue was kind of a head scratcher. I didn’t realize we were at war with Muslims, in particular the Muslim cab drivers of Indianapolis that frequently visit the airport. Apparently, though, my thinking was in the minority as I read through the comments submitted by readers to the Indystar.com story.

The comments were downright scary.

I remember one in particular…in the first part of the post, the commenter noted that we are a Christian nation (and that he himself was a God-fearing Christian), and that Muslims have no rights here. In the second part of the post, he advocated nuclear attacks against the entire middle east. Others followed by stating that the Koran explicitly states that non-believers should be converted by the sword.

Well, the Bible states that the world was created in 8 days, but very few Christians actually believe this. Just as the vast majority of Muslims do not take a literal interpretation of the Koran, and are quite peaceful people.

The problem seems to be that their religion is undergoing a sort of dark ages that the Christians went through several hundred years ago, along the lines of the Inquisition. Their fundamentalists (and literal Koran interpreters), are the people we are at war with. It is the fundamentalists who are murdering non-Muslims, yet it seems that very few people in this country are making that distinction. Not only that, but they seem willing to throw their Christian values out the window and make blanket generalizations about the situation (All Muslims are evil! We should nuke the middle east! Don’t fool yourself, a Muslim would murder you where you stand!).

Unfortunately, there are three things at play here within our country that contribute to this mentality. Those three things are the rise of Christian Nationalism, the declining public education system, and the ubiquitous media and press access. In combination, these three issues lead to more and more people not thinking for themselves. As my father told me once, it’s a lot easier to follow the pack than to think for yourself. With media blowhards and propagandists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly leading the charge (not to mention the countless pastors who use their power in the pulpit to preach hatred and purposefully misleading FreedomWatch.org ads), is it any wonder their listeners do not see the hypocrisy within themselves? Be a good Christian! Kill a Muslim! (or a rotten librul…those darn free thinkin hippies are gunna git us all kilt!)

We are in the midst of an ideological war, in addition to a military war. In order to swing the much more important ideological war in our favor, the Christians of the world need to practice what they preach. They need to show compassion, outright disgust at war (whether it’s our own country’s war or anothers’), and stop shouting down ideas that conflict with their faith or politics. We have taken a massive step backwards in invading Iraq, as this has helped radicalize some Muslims that may have been on the fence, and solidified our image as an imperialist bully, constantly harassing and shaking down the little guys for our own economic and power gains. We need to understand our enemy, understand that they hate us for our foreign policy and hypocrisy and NOT because of our freedoms. Ask the youth of Iran, who would gladly replace their fascist theocracy with freedom American-style (of course, not at the cost of losing loved ones and having your country bombed into the stone ages in the process). We need to keep our eye on the proverbial ball and win the hearts and minds of the world Muslim majority by showing compassion, forgiveness, and love, and cease spreading fear, war, and hatred.