What the World Needs Now

More Gaffes from Public Figures: Last week, head coach Jim Mora of the Atlanta Falcons committed the bone-headed gaffe of talking on a radio show about how much he wanted the head coaching job at the University of Washington. Of course, Mora is already being paid a couple mill to coach the Falcons by the now unhappy owner Arthur Blank.

But few people realize how tough politicians, celebrities, and sports figures have it in their almost daily rounds of broadcasts, interviews, and call-in shows. All of these are impromptu forms of entertainment in which the person being interviewed--here the coach of the Atlanta Falcons--is supposed to be interesting, funny, emotionally compelling, or entertaining in some other way without having the benefit of a script or a writer. It's not easy to be creatively entertaining on the spur of the moment like that, especially if you're being asked about something that's personally touchy or something that you don't know anything about as all. A few weeks ago, the campus newspaper interviewed me about the presentation of an artist named Matuschka on my campus. I had gone to the presentation, enjoyed it, and had some vaguely formulated ideas, but I don't know anything about art and I was tired at the end of the week. So I tossed out a couple of boring platitudes and gave up to the disappointment of the interviewer who had been counting on me to say something interesting.

Personally, I think we should be more accepting of political, celebrity, and sports gaffes. If we expect people to say interesting things all the times, then we should also allow for a certain percentage of gaffes to allow for the human element. Maybe they get paid well, but politicians, celebrities, and sports figures are human like the rest of us.

More Brawling in the NBA. Well, David Stern handed down penalties from last weeks big NBA brawl. Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggests was suspended for 15 games while J. R. Smith of the Nuggets and Nate Robinson of the Knicks will sit for 10. Once again, I'm surprised that there aren't more brawls in both pro and college sports. Athletes play at tremendous peaks of intensity seeking to "impose their will" on their opponents and are expected to exercise the super-human self-control needed to stay within the rules of the game. In football and basketball, it's all about manhood--proving that you're nothing less than a man or "the man" and fighting against any aspersions on your manliness. Nobody should be shocked when a player like Mardy Collins loses control and commits a flagrant foul or when Carmelo Anthony steps in on behalf of his teammate. In fact, basketball and football players should be allowed the same emotional flexibility as coaches. Coaches, both professional and college, regularly explode into histrionics--often at their own players. For a variety of perverse reasons--quite often race-- the emotional outbursts of authority figures like coaches are much more acceptable than any loss of control by their subordinates.

Love, Sweet Love. Mrs. RSI says that I should include love in the things that the world needs more of. Who am I to argue with her or with Burt Bacharach? But one of the ways that we create a little space for love is to allow a little more space for the less dignified human emotions and enormous spur-of-the-moment errors. I'm not talking Oprah-like confessions or Bill O'Reilly bombast--just some more openness to the emotional irregularities of the human condition.