Tonight, the NCAA college basketball championships will resolve themselves, to the joy of some and the depression of the others who watch, and the blissful ignorance of the rest. That “ignorant rest” includes yours truly, who feels that watching a 9:20pm start to an athletic contest, involving two schools to which he has no loyalty, is insane, especially on a work night.
The winners will be celebrated, the losers consoled, and all those who care about the players will wax poetic about this play or that, or this player or that. For days the game will make headlines, until it doesn’t, and we start talking about some other sporting event.
Now, I take second to none in my sports fandom, although that fandom has long since dropped basketball, and never included soccer. I’m a fanatical rooter for the Boston Red Sox, though I live in North Carolina and didn’t even visit New England until college. Go figure. I’m part of a neighborhood NFL-watching club; I’m a high-70s golfer and tape most PGA tournaments to watch at my leisure. And I like hockey.
But there is literally nothing productive about all that, nothing that makes a contribution to society as a whole. Sports are a healthy outlet for our natural competitive juices in such a way that we don’t get hurt, or hurt anyone.
And yet the pedestals on which we place the stars of the sports we watch are far, far higher than those of people who actually provide lasting contributions to society.
It is not a simple matter, but let us, for a moment, go back to school.
Consider, for example, (1) the star quarterback, (2) the good old 4.0 nerd, and (3) the star quarterback who also carries a 4.0. Rank them in descending order of the respect they earn, both in admiration from their own classmates, and in attention from the girls.
It’s obviously the 4.0 quarterback, the non-4.0 quarterback, and finally the nerd. But more than that, the gap between the 4.0 and non-4.0 quarterback is minimal, and the dropoff to the nerd is gargantuan. Yet in terms of their ultimate likelihood of success (and therefore, the ability to provide for a family and contribute to society), the nerd is every bit as likely to succeed as the 4.0 quarterback, and far more likely to succeed than the non-4.0 QB.
But that has been the case for decades; certainly as long as I’ve been around (and I was in high school in the 1960s). What has happened since then is worse. One specific symptom is “grade inflation”, and it is the essential concept that not only is no student allowed to fail, but the currency of school success — the “A” — is handed out for substantially less demonstrated accomplishment than was the case 50 years since.
The generalization, though, is far more pernicious. It is the idea that true talent and accomplishment, those who are able to make that contribution, are diluted and, at some ages, peer-disrespected rather than admired and supported.
It is the corollary that success outside the athletic arena can and should be demeaned, such as by associating it with “white supremacy”, or by Harvard and other Ivy League schools making it far more difficult for Asian applicants to get in, to the point of their being sued all the way to the Supreme Court, which is going to have an awfully tough time not ruling in the students’ favor.
Why should this be? Well, of course there has always been an element of jealousy involved, because (as I wrote here (in https://robertsutton.substack.com/p/fruitlessly-fighting-racism), we are always essentially in junior high, trying to make ourselves look better to the opposite sex by demeaning everyone else.
We don’t look at Tom Brady and seek ways to trivialize his career, right? Nothing is to be gained by that. And yet, we are, and should be astonished at what Elon Musk has done, not just by building a car company and sending rockets into space, but taking over Twitter and being willing to expose its awful warts to the public.
We should be astonished that one man can do all that. And maybe we all are. But unlike Brady, he is taking broadsides daily from those whose corrupt use of the Twitter platform was facilitated by Musk’s predecessors. He should be a chapter in American History II in every high school in the country, but more good words will be written about whoever scores more points in an ultimately meaningless NCAA basketball game tonight than will be written about Elon Musk in a year.
Someone does not want academic and business creativity and achievement to be celebrated. Gee, why might that be? Could that be the same element that keeps mouthing off that academic achievement is “white”, and discouraging anyone from the non-white communities who shows promise in school in the classroom?
Who might have such a self-interest? Of course, there are the members of those communities themselves, who have been raised in an environment that demeans academic success. There are the teachers unions, who advocate any position that doesn’t require their members to work hard (or, in the case of Covid, work at all).
There are the mayors and councils of the cities where such children fail constantly while passing grade after grade without having learned at grade level — politicians who get campaign money from those same unions.
And finally, there are the media, who fail at their job by ignoring success. The 2023 version of “If it bleeds, it leads”, is simply “If it’s productive or healthy, don’t write about it at all.” If you doubt that, think back to the roaring 2019 economy before China sent Covid overseas. The media blithely ignored the millions being hauled out of poverty by the economic opportunity afford by the previous administration. the media flat-out didn’t want you to see it.
Oh, yeah — I just recalled what those folks have in common.
They’re all Democrats.
Copyright 2014-2023 by Robert Sutton
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