I Heart New York; All You Haters Suck My Game Balls

Before I talk any football, I need to get this out of the way.

Over the weekend, I read via RSS feeds on my crackberry about the ignorant asshat that posted 9/11 jokes as NY Giants smack. I find his attempts at humor abhorrent, putrific, and shameful. Sports are a welcome diversion to all the tragedy in life - but horseshit like this has the capacity to suck all the life and fun right out the experience.

I had some time to think about the issue on the road trip back home yesterday, and one thought kept popping up in my little mind: These deplorable jokes have apparently been posted on numerous low-life web sites for some time. Why there such a widespread outcry now? Why the sudden outcry when the jokes are used on a football site?

There may be some merit to the idea that Seahawks vs. Giants is a topic this week anyway, and something this controversial will automatically get launched to the top.

But that's not the real reason these jokes have taken greater offense.

It's because we expect better from football fans.

It's one thing to hear vile things come out of the mouth of someone you already consider a scumbag. It's quite another thing to hear the same words come out of someone of respect.

To illustrate: If you overhear some socially retarded punk on the street crack a horrifying joke about aborted fetuses, you would likely be offended, but dismissive. If the President of the whole freaking United States of America parlayed that joke at a fund raiser for stem cell research, the whole damn world would be offended beyond measure. Why?

Because we expect better from public authority figures.

The world of sports fans is an amusing one. Insults and epithets abound, but at the core of fandom, there is a largely unspoken brotherly love and respect. One only has to recall the outpouring of support from all circles of NFL fans in the season following 9/11 to realize this basic underlying connection.

We also expect better from the 12th man in general. I know I'm biased, but we have become one of the greatest bunches of sports fans in the planet. We're smart, informed, witty, spirited, humane, and even-tempered. We have a sense of humor about opposing teams, but also about ourselves.

But this? It definitely sullies our reputation. It's truly pathetic, insensitive, amoral, and nauseating. It makes the worlds of amusement and tragedy collide, sucking all the fun out. Bastard.

Whomever you are, of my three loyal readers -- if you've read this far, you were probably pissed off as well.

Please join with me in moving on and forgetting this dipshit. Let's go back to making fun of the gap between Micheal Strahan's teeth.