Even though I don’t follow football all that much, I was rooting for the New York Giants in tonight’s Superbowl. I wasn’t pulling for the Giants as underdogs or because I wanted to see New England’s perfect record ruined. I did it out of a different principle — to protest the ruin of the words that indicate traditions that we hold so dear in this country.
Over the recent months, I’ve been hearing a great deal about a scandal rocking the football world termed “spygate“. For those who follow football even less than I do, this scandal involved some individuals associated with the New England Patriots football franchise taping opposing teams in order to steal defensive signals. That kind of puts a tarnish on claims of being undefeated or of creating a dynasty or doing anything deemed honorable, you know — worthy of being called a patriot. To make matters worse, this scandal has drawn the attention of U.S. Senators such as Arlen Specter. Yeah, they’re doing so well with the war that they could spare some extra effort on cleaning up the world of professional athletics.
But it goes beyond even that. The term “patriot” was tarnished since it’s original use in another unscrupulous spy program, the USA PATRIOT Act. Technically, the word may have been tarnished long before that as detailed in my classic post from June 23rd, 2006, “Blacks are Terrorists“. What do Spygate and the PATRIOT Act have in common? Two things — raising something unamerican to the status of a virtue and calling it being a “patriot” and being things the government should leave alone because they will screw it up.
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