Michael Irvin's induction speech

No, I wouldn't run it if my paper were national because organized religion is a crock of shit.

 

Well, this has become a fun pissing match...

In a sense Yawn is right...not just in the Irvin story, but in most national stories, the news media seems to project a "general morality" defined by "good people" and "bad people" and "everyday heroes" and the "evil that lurks in your neighborhood." This general morality involves letting people live their lives (fuck who you want, eat what you want, drink what you want, make as much money as you want, do what you want how you want when you want) until it either hurts someone else (however that's measured) or said person fucks up in an Official Way In Which You Are Not Allowed to Fuck Up.

At that point, the media, the great purveyor and defender of this general, completely objective and unobtrusive morality, cast their lots and make their judgments. The saddest portion of the paper is invariably the cops section, where reporters suck the collective cocks of police departments and print just about anything that falls out of PR Cop's mouth. Irvin made an excellent point years ago when he asked the media to report his innocence on a given charge with "equal intensity" as it had the original allegations. The media did not.

In other words, the media is both European and Puritanical. It plays at freedom but revels in punishment. As a collective, God, any God, is simply not enough for the media. Because it wants to God. It wants to be the threshing floor. The media is constantly after the "truth." It seeks to write in its own daily Bibles. It is its own idol.

So Yawn, I dunno. Why are you really surprised?

 

Neat question, and entirely beside the point.

The real question is...why is any of the speech valid if some of it isn't? If you can't run the meat of the speech for reason x, why is any of it usuable? Because it's generally moral?

 

INSENSITIVITY ALERT (Don't read if you don't want to be offended.)

Yeah, listening to Michael Irvin talk about God isn't on my list of things to do today, but I'm all ears if I hear he told some of his blow and ho stories. Then again, did he mention anything about talking to God while lying on the carpet at the Vet while being rained with boos? I'd like to hear that.

 

Excuse me, but I happen to live in Middle America. And no one I know, either a co-worker, friend or casual acquaintance, thinks that way.

I wouldn't vote or Hilary, but not cuz she is a woman.

I'd chose Obama, though I really wish Colin Powell would one day run.

 

This question was Yawn-specific, for exactly the reason you describe. If you're going to fight for the media to include any acknowledgment of the Almighty, you have to fight for every acknowledgment of the Almighty.

To your point, Alma, that the media derogates the deity on one hand while arrogating to itself the deity's powers on the other, I'm not sure I disagree.

I'd ask this, though -

- How are we to know when an athlete or a politician or any public figure is simply using the appearance of faith hypocritically, as a fig leaf to conceal bad behavior?

- And, more broadly, is morality only possible in the presence of God? Or is a morality made by man just as moral?

 

I'm not offended, but I think what you're saying is that Irvin isn't allowed to be a Christian. He's led too shitty a life for that.

 

Since it's not Christianity, the liberal media would have aired the comment in full, followed it up with a panel of Islam/Buddhism/etc. in the NFL, and had no rebuttal from Pat Robertson's kind.

 

You can speak to his faults, but quote him in context. That's not Christianity at issue, that's first amendment rights of free speech.

 

Actually, I think what he's saying is ... why should we believe him now when we know what he was like before? Just because he says the right things doesn't mean we should take him at his word.

 

Of course, he's allowed to be religious. Of course, he's allowed to talk about it all he wants. I just don't believe any of it in his case. I think it's a reputation fix.

 

If you want to editorialize, fine. Otherwise, report what happened.

Big, big difference Buck-o.