Inaugural - A Cheating Culture

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

blogger.com made launching this first blog really simple. By far, the hardest part was naming the blog. I think I've found the perfect match.

I've followed the steroid scandall in baseball for so long now I'm entirely fed up with it. I don't care how Bud Selig & Donald Fehr ultimately attempt their restoration of public confidence. It's not likely to do much for me. I'm a huge baseball fan. I love the game. It's a great combination of individual effort with team concepts. It's a game of numbers and strategy, pure power and graceful ellegance. I love it.

But I'm absolutely fed up with all the discussion about "performance enhancing substances." I'm tired of talking about the substances. The steroids, the creams, the injections, the andro, the greenies. It's pathetic. I'd like to see us start talking about the men, the boys, the cheaters, the un-cheaters. It's time to talk about character. It's time to raise our expectations.

Policing professional sports at the level and cost required to keep cheaters from cheating and keep the sport "clean" is ridiculous. I'd argue it's a waste of money. If we have to spend that much money to keep play clean, let's just stop playing. That could never happen unless the fans decide they've had enough and send the signals. There's a ton of money involved and it creates incentives to cheat. But we should be able to expect our sports icons to resist those temptations. Isn't that what we're all teaching our kids?

VanGundy, Stern, Cuban et al. exhibit some of the most disgusting fruits of a cheating culture. An accusation of cheating arises and we spend a week talking about the accusation and wondering if the accuser is actually the one trying to cheat. I'm almost willing to stop following organized sports altogether. I enjoy them so much that would be difficult, but I'm so fed up with all of it. The worst part is, fleeing the cheating mentality of so many premier athletes and executives leaves one no alternate haven. Sadly, there's no refuge from which this culture of cheating can be entirely avoided.

President Bush has introduced accountability processes into our public educational system. I applaud that. By so doing, he has also hightened the pressures on many school administrators and educators throughout the country. I also applaud that. Inasmuch as these noble, self-sacrificing souls have volunteered to care for our children and ensure their successful education, we can trust them to do so with the greatest possible integrity, right? Wrong. We now learn that the very educators entrusted in inculcate the tools and standards of successful living and teaching cheating. Houston Independent School District.

Where does it end? We're learning daily about where it's starting, in elementary schools and primary schools throughout the country at the hand of those we expect to do precisely the reverse.

Who's to blame? The athletes? The educators? Of course not, they're just victims of a culture of cheating like you and me. Humbug. I don't believe it. Cheating and accountability are opposite ends of the same stick. To deal vigorously with a culture of cheating means to elevate standards of personal accountability. The pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction. Turning the tide requires penalties that are clear, swift and forceful.

But that's just how to deal with adult cheaters in the act. Regretably, popular culture is full of cheating models. I'm even fond of a few of them myself. Can't wait for The Itallian Job II in 2006 (or whatever the official title will be), even though it's a show about cheaters just like Oceans 11/12 which I happened to enjoy a great deal. Culturally, we need to choose heros worthy of the title. Role models fitting the obligations of celbrity. Whatever your other moral persuasion on moral subjects of every sort, surely cheating can universally be agreed upon as a target to be driven out of our lexicon.

It's just so tiring not to be able to believe anyone any more.