The Perversion That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Let's call this straight; of everyone involved in "Das Booty", the Vikings' Sex Cruise of a few weeks back, it's the bar staff - the waitresses and bartenders who were working in the bar, below decks, where most of the debauchery was taking place - whose voices have the greatest danger of being squashed between those of the Vikings, Al and Alma's boat company, and the politicians and lawyers involved on all sides.

At least until the facts start coming out, and every plaintiff's bar lawyer in America calls up with a contingency offer.

Let me say this: If a Viking - or anyone - were to harass my daughter the way the Viking apparently did with the twenty-something women working on those cruise boats, a lawsuit would only the the last of their problems.

As it should be.

Let me also make it known that while I generally think Nick Coleman is among th worst columnists working in America today, he has his occasional good moment.

And with material like this to work with:

"Her life has been totally disrupted by the stupidity and thoughtlessness of the Vikings. She told me she has dreams about it every night, and that she can't stand it."

...even a puff-merchant like Brian Lambert could could across like Jack Anderson.

But Nick just can't make it to the end of his most recent column on the subject without letting his faux-populist roots show.

This is the sort of story that a "community columnist" is supposed to knock through the uprights, as it were, especially a columnist whose claimed goal is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted". And Coleman even gets most of it right. Read the column. You be the judge.

"My daughter saw it all, but she has been told not to talk and she won't even answer my questions anymore," Emily says. "One guy offered her $100 to 'dance' for him. If this was in a restaurant, she could have run away, and she would have. But on a boat, you're trapped.

"She wants to get over it, but she isn't getting over it. She sees this when she closes her eyes at night. It's not like I can say, 'It's OK, Honey. I went through this when I was your age, and you'll endure.' I have never been to an orgy when I didn't want to be there."

Emily laughed at that point, clarifying for me that she has never been to an orgy, voluntarily or otherwise.

Compelling stuff.

And then...:

When millionaires behave badly, the innocent often end up slimed.

Huh?

So we're blaming "millionaires"? Buncombe; if you put the managing partners at an accounting or law firm on a boat, the odds of an orgy breaking out would be somewhere down below James Lileks' chances of posting up Allen Iverson. And if you put the board of directors of, say, Minnesota Public Radio or the regents of the University of Minnesota in a limo (does Volvo make a stretch limo?) with a case of champagne, do you supposed they'd pull over and whiz in someone's azaleas on their way to a party?

This isn't about "millionaires"; there's no "millionaire culture" that prompts people with seven digits in their bank account to act like slime.

No. This is about the dual loopdielands of our nation's predominant urban culture, and the culture of the professional athlete, as they mix and splatter on the innocent bystander.

Professional athletes are all too often sidetracked at an early age (early teens, sometimes earlier) where expectations and consequences are grossly warped, compared to those that most of us live with; many coast through high school and "college" scarcely cracking a book, never holding a real job, never having to learn to show up for work or class on time (or suffering consequences for it); they're treated as exceptional long before they're mature enough to handle it.

As to the dominant urban culture - well, there's nothing that happened on Das Booty that you can't see over and over with a one-hour swerve onto MTV or BET (only the women in the videos are paid to bump and grind on cue; they do it for a living). The ultimate value system of the dominant urban culture - whether in South Minneapolis or at Lakeville High School - is "Life Ain't Nothin' but Benzos and Hos. The culture glorifies excess, violence, and a consequence-free life. It denigrates work (except for athletes), learning, intelligence (beyond the animalistic "street" level) and ethics.

At the downmarket end of the scale, the two cultures' clash has led to illegitimate births in most major cities; to unemployable punks gathering in gangs and turning much of Minneapolis into a free-fire zone; to a subculture that is working overtime to disassimilate itself from the ethical, moral and intellectual life of this nation.

At the upmarket end? Professional athletes devoid of ethics, of any moral guide outside their own desires, spoiled rotten from adolescence, who believe the world revolves around them (and those are the one in ten thousand that are talented enough to make it to the bigs; the tens of thousands left behind at college, high school and the playground with no social or job skills; they're not partying on Lake Minnetonka).

When will someone in the local media have the nerve to call it straight? It's not the money that causes the problem; it's the view of the world.

I hope the subjects of Coleman's piece are in court, soon, on the plaintiff's side of the room, with a firm grip on the parts of the Vikings involved that cause the problem in the first place.

I'm talking, of course, about their stunted sense of ethics, right and wrong, and morality, of course.

Posted by Mitch at October 24, 2005 12:38 PM | TrackBack