David Stern's banishment of Ron Artest from the NBA amounts to the establishment of a nanny state.
A guy walks into a bar. He gets drunk and insults another patron. The offended party takes a swing at the drunk and connects, knocking the drunk on his butt. The drunk stumbles towards the door. On his way out the door, a trial lawyer who just happened to be in the same bar informs the drunk that the man who hit him is rich, and offers his services to sue. The drunk takes him up on his offer and wins 2.5 million in civil court. The bar patron declares bankruptcy and lays off 15% of his employees.
Justice?
When I first moved to NYC and was tutoring kids in a program at Columbia, an Italian guy asked me why Americans are so arrogant. I told him it's because we are always within a few degrees of separation from somebody rich. We don't have to work as hard as other people to reach a level of material success. The secret? OPM. Other People's Money. There's an entire class of Americans who reach affluence and leisure just managing OPM. Since this Italian kid was a grad student, I reasoned that he was surrounded by just such Americans. He suddenly understood.
There is also another class of Americans who prefer to be the movers and the shakers, rather than their attendants and toadies. These are truly remarkable people who are easily distinguished from the idle, decadent and otherwise Paris Hiltonesque rich. We're arrogant because we're a few degrees away from them too.
Anybody who thinks there are any atheletes who didn't work their asses off to get to the top of professional sports is really living in a dreamworld. People like Ron Artest are the go-getters, and people like David Stern are the estate administrators. When the attendants and toadies can transfer wealth to appease the whinings of drunk fans and the morally outraged, it is an inversion of the values that make this America a great place.
It's class warfare. It's soaking the rich. It's wrong.
The Indiana Pacers have just been destroyed by the collective actions of drunk Detroit fans and their head commissar, David Stern. Be afraid.
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