We are a sick group of individuals. We’ve got to the point we’re just openly pandering for pity.
Oh, but it’s worse than that – we have to be creative in how we seek each other’s pity. We line up more excuses than a high school freshman before homework is due in Algebra class. We’re like the opposite of stand-up comics, trying out new sappy material on unsuspecting people to get them to feel bad for us.
We are master manipulators and we are one-uppers. We constantly have a retort in the chamber, ready to take on anyone.
If someone talks about money, you’re poorer. If groceries cost you $125 a week, they easily cost me $200. If someone tells you they are tired, everyone else takes offense to this.
“You’re tired? Ha! I worked 62.435 hours this week and put up a new fence in the backyard!”
“Oh…wow…you must be exhausted.”
It’s nauseating and it has to stop. Why can’t we just have conversations that don’t automatically imply that you’re directly talking about anyone other than yourself? We’re all selfish anyway, so what’s the difference?
What happened to the good old days where we used to just feel bad for people based on our own emotions? Now you have to lay it on like you life is a replay of the Labor Day MDA Tele-thon.
And frankly, I’m mad because there are no levels of these pity parties anymore. Because of this, I’m becoming numb to handing out any sympathy what-so-ever.
Case in point to all of this: Sports Illustrated’s senior NFL writer, Peter King.
King, who you’ve probably seen on NBC over the past several years on “Football Night in America”, is a widely respected veteran who writes the “Monday Morning Quarterback” column for SI.com and also does features in SI during football season. He is also heavily entwined with the NFL and is one of the electors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
This week, King makes a passive-aggressive comment bemoaning the fact that people are upset with the committee over this year’s inductions (and those that were left out, namely, Bill Parcells and Cris Carter).
Now, you want to get mad and defend yourself in print every now and then, I’m fine with that.
But then Tuesday rolled around and King wrote a follow-up column that oozed self-pity seeking narcissism. Literally, an entire follow-up column devoted to poor Peter, by Peter, about how hard it is to select the Hall of Fame inductees each year, how much time he spends on it, how the weight carries a burden on him that increases each time he goes about voting.
First of all, get over yourself. It’s football. A game. I mean, I am as passionate about sports as they come, but crying all over your laptop over the flack you’re catching over the Hall of Fame is a little bewildering and
Really?
This is what our most esteemed football journalist is doing now? I know it’s 10 days after the Super Bowl and things are slow…but really? How egocentric can you be?
King rambles and babbles on and on throughout the column about how the process works (or doesn’t) and he basically supported everyone who’s ever played the game. It’s not his fault Bill Parcells isn’t in the Hall of Fame this year. It’s not his fault Cris Carter goes another year without a gold jacket.
He also justifies that he doesn’t take things personal against candidates and how he’s not holding some grudge that keeps players out.
That’s fine, truly. But shouldn’t that go without saying? Why do you have to write a column defending yourself? You know what you do when you are Peter King and you’ve built up such an honorable credibility over 30 years of covering the sport? You don’t acknowledge them. You ignore them. What does it matter what Joey from Long Island thinks about you for leaving Parcells out?
Stooping to the level of the rabble just besmirches you, not them. Some people just want to complain, over complain and watch the world burn. And it exposes you as somewhat of a blowhard, frankly, when you defend yourself to this level. To wax philosophic about how important the task of voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is unbecoming and pretentious.
But King misses the point in two different ways, actually.
First, is the bottom line: Bill Parcells should be in the Hall of Fame by now, so should Cris Carter. You are one of the people, as a collective group, who did not put them in.
Again, it’s football. It’s the Hall of Fame. And Bill Parcells isn’t in it.
How would you expect people to react, Pete? He’s Bill Parcells, the Bob Knight or Tony LaRussa of the NFL.
Secondly, King is playing the same hand so many in this country do…something happened that others don’t like, so feel bad for me because I’m being attacked.
We’ve become enablers. We play to the minority more than the majority.
To illustrate this, think of the last time a group of people went out to eat and couldn’t come to an agreement on where to eat because one person out of 10 doesn’t like pizza. Another guy hates hamburgers. Someone doesn’t like fish. And soon enough we’re sitting around at some weird pizza and fish taco place pacifying them.
If Parcells didn’t deserve the Hall, then tell us why. Or, you know, don’t write two columns in a row that belabor the point of how you are not to blame and defend your own honor.
Whatever happens from here on out, I don’t care. After reading King for nearly 10 years, I’m out. He lost me. Not that he cares – he doesn’t even know who I am, so my reading or not reading his columns doesn’t bother him nearly as much as those that are screaming about the Hall of Fame today. But I won’t be coming back.
It’s the first of many changes I’ll be taking to stop enabling people who take pity on themselves and demand, through a carefully and manically crafted plan of self-absorption, that we take pity on them too.
Just stop it.
We’re so afraid of offending anyone that we say nothing – even when we should be offended (like Nicki Minaj’s horrendous, sacrilegious and terribly offensive Grammy act Sunday). Soon enough, someone in the Celebrity Culture of Sports and Hollywood (yes, it’s got an official name and everything, at least to me) will be telling a sob story that gets us all back on their side.
We should show pity to ourselves, because we really are a sad and pathetic bunch.
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