Jason Collins: The Greatest Hero Who Has Ever Lived

The word “courage” used to mean something. No longer. The meaning of one of Antiquity’s cardinal virtues has been diluted to the point of nothingness.

Enter Jason Collins, the basketball player who announced that he was gay.

This was earthshattering news stealing front page headlines across the nation.

The news worthiness of the announcement is debatable. What is far more interesting to me is the implied and sometimes explicitly stated narrative that Jason Collins was somehow “courageous” for coming out.

ABC’s “World News” anchor, Diane Sawyer, led Monday night’s broadcast by gushing about an “an act of personal courage.”

She also referred to Jason Collins as “a powerhouse player in the NBA,” which is just not true.

President Obama declared  “I couldn't be prouder of Jason Collins,” and scores of other media personalities and celebrities are falling over themselves to offer their support and praise.

Let’s get something straight—no pun intended.  

Jason Collins is an aging basketball player on the tail end of an infinitely unspectacular career. His career scoring average is a highly unimpressive 3.6 points/game. He also averaged a meager 3.8 rebounds/game. He played 6 games this regular season, and is by no means guaranteed to be picked up by a team for the 2013-2014 season.

That puts him somewhere between role player and “who is Jason Collins?” and never earned him a sizable contract relative to other basketball players (He earned roughly $33 million over a 12 year career). 

His one obligatory endorsement was with Nike.   

By coming out, Collins goes from an obscure NBA player to a pop culture icon revered by the liberal news and entertainment media.

He is going to be on the cover of every national magazine, and he can potentially now make a lot of money.

He is going to attend all the fancy parties in Hollywood and New York, where he will be the guest of honor.

Leaving no mark on the basketball court, he now establishes an indelible legacy as the first openly gay athlete in one of the four major sports.

In other words, his “courageous” decision to come out will lead to fame, potential fortune, and a legacy.

Is there a potential downside of his coming out? I cannot think of one. Perhaps if he was just starting his career, he would be risking delving into the unknown. How would NBA veterans react to his homosexuality, would they treat him differently in the locker room, etc.

But the fact that he is on the verge of retiring renders his coming out completely risk-free. There are no downsides, only benefits.

So that brings us to the question of courage. If courage requires personal sacrifice, or taking a risk, or venturing into the unknown, then Jason Collins’ decision to come out cannot be possibly be considered an act of courage.

He is not going to be ostracized by the NBA; on the contrary, he will be publicly embraced and celebrated.         

He certainly will not be ostracized by our open, gay-friendly society. In short, he can only benefit. He cannot lose.

Jason Collins made the right decision to come out. But his is hardly an act of courage.         

Justifying Left-Wing Violence

In the wake of the violent riots spreading like wildfire throughout Great Britain, a not-all-too unfamiliar narrative is unfolding in the Orwellian world of left-wing punditry. It seems that some on the left are eager to partially excuse the violence by attributing it to economic disillusionment among the British youth.  Disillusionment, the argument goes, brought about by Prime Minister David Cameron’s conservative policies aimed at reining in out-of-control spending and deficits.    

This morning, CNN anchor Carol Costello quoted a British Blogger Laurie Penny, who explained the riots this way:  "The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things have become...They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the support structures, and nothing would happen."

There you have it. According to Ms. Penny, senseless rioting is the rational manifestation of government policies allegedly designed to destroy the social safety net. No context, such as the unsustainable extravagance of the British welfare state, is given.  

Recognizing the similarities between Britain’s austerity measures and calls for fiscal responsibility by conservatives here in the US, Carol Costello asked her viewers whether these riots could spread to the US.  After all, she writes on Facebook, “The American middle class and the poor also think their government has no clue. And they worry it is about to take away Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at a time so many depend on them to survive. For many Americans what's happening in Britain is like looking into a mirror.”

What is most striking about this line of thinking is not that Ms. Costello oversimplifies the complex issue of entitlement reform or that she engages in class warfare. It is the implication that violent riots carried out by “the middle class and the poor” in the US would be a rational reaction to policies which she deems objectionable. In other words, we shouldn’t be surprised by rioting if conservatives get their way.

Imagine if a conservative pundit floated a similar sentiment during the heated debate over Obamacare? He would have no doubt been accused of justifying if not inciting violence.Of course, there was no violent reaction to the Democratic takeover of one sixth of the US economy. American conservatives organized peacefully and spoke loudly at the ballot box last November.

The idea that the violent rioters are anything other than thugs who have no regard for private property, little regard for human life, and a deep-seated disdain for law and order is a grave insult to the thousands of UK citizens whose livelihood is being destroyed and whose personal safety is constantly being threatened.  

It's also telling that while peaceful tea-party rallies are slandered by the left as hubs for violence, actual left-wing violence is excused and explained as an acceptable reaction to "unjust" policies. The hypocrisy is stunning.

Laurie Penny yearns for the pre-Margaret Thatcher days of nationalization; a time when standards of living in the UK were much lower than they are today and private entrepreneurship was discouraged and squashed by an overbearing government. She laments the current efforts to restore fiscal sanity by falsely representing necessary austerity measures as an assault on people's livelihood. For her part, Carol Costello falsely claims that politicians want to take away people's Social Security and Medicare and implies that violent rioting would be understandable if entitlements are reduced.

Not everyone on the left is rushing to excuse the riots. But those who aren’t are mostly silent. The silence is deafening when you consider how hard the left strains to portray the tea party as a racist, extreme and potentially violent movement. Where no violence exists, the left bellows in indignation. When left-wing violence is front and center for all to see, conservative policies are blamed.

The Filibuster: Friend or Foe?

Senate Democrats, liberal interest groups, and their allies in the media are growing increasingly angry at the perpetual filibuster threat posed by the Republican minority. Over the weekend, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) announced plans to reintroduce legislation that would effectively eliminate the filibuster.

To be fair to Senator Harkin, he did introduce similar legislation in 1995 when the Democrats were in the minority. However, news stories and op-eds questioning the wisdom of the filibuster are more prevalent now that the Democrats control both chambers of Congress. On the CBS News Blog, Bob Fuss laments the filibuster in an article entitled "How Filibusters are Strangling the Senate." The liberal columnist Paul Krugman makes a similar argument in his New York Times column. But these columnists didn't object when Democrats used the filibuster during the Bush Administration. This is because the left-leaning media is indignant that the Republican filibuster could derail a liberal agenda, but were all too happy too see a Democrat filibuster undermine a conservative agenda. 

This kind of transparent bias and hypocrisy extends beyond the politics of the filibuster. TV anchors and pundits are quick to echo the Democratic Party line that Republicans are "obstructionists" and label the Republican Party the "party of no." Yet when Democrats were in the minority, Republicans also accused Democrats of obstructionism and the media did not legitimize that talking point.   

In 2005, after the Democrats successfully filibustered ten of George Bush's high-profile nominees to the federal courts of appeals, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to invoke the nuclear option, which would have required a simple majority to approve a judicial nominee. The Democrats and most in the mainstream press cried foul. Now the tables have turned, and the Republicans (and centrist Democrats) use the filibuster threat, while Democrats ponder some variation of the nuclear option. But as Byron York points out in the Washington Examiner, there is a major substantive distinction between filibustering judicial nominees and filibustering legislation:

The argument was that the judicial filibuster undermined the Senate's constitutional responsibility to give advice and consent on the president's judicial nominations. When legislation is filibustered, it's possible for a bill's sponsors to make changes that will satisfy opponents. But what happens when a nominee is filibustered? No advice and consent. The Constitution does not require the Senate to pass a national health care bill, but it does require it to confirm or deny the president's appointees...So Republicans came up with what was called the "nuclear option"... GOP lawmakers made clear at the time that they were not going after the legislative filibuster...(emphasis added)

It is understandable for politicians to support a parliamentary tactic when it advances their agenda, and oppose it when it does not. It makes sense for those in the majority to label the recalcitrant minority "obstructionist," and then when political fortunes are reversed, turn around and obstruct. This is somewhat hypocritical, but such is the art of politics that self-interest usually trumps consistency. What is not acceptable or intellectually honest is for so many in the media to bemoan the filibuster when it threatens a liberal agenda and celebrate it when it hinders a conservative one.   

The Sin of Omission Revisited

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who gained national fame earlier this year when he accused Republicans of wanting "sick people to die", compared America's healthcare system to the "Holocaust", and declared that Fox News and the Republicans are "the enemy", is back. Following in the footsteps of Hugo Chavez, Rep. Grayson wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that Florida resident Angie Langley be prosecuted and imprisoned for five years. Her crime? Ms. Langley has launched a website critical of Congressman Grayson. The website documents Grayson's various improprieties and allows visitors to donate to a Committee seeking to defeat the Congressman in next year's election. As far as partisan websites go, it is fairly tame and respectful. Much worse things have been said about much better men than Mr. Grayson.

Yet the Congressman will have none of it. He is demanding Ms. Langley be sentenced to five years in prison, citing a laughably flimsy set of criteria. It is only fitting that one of the most hateful and unhinged elected officials is embracing his inner-Stalin.

And is the media at the forefront of this unprecedented Congressional hubris? As is almost always the case when a Democratic politician does something untoward (never mind outrageous), the mainstream press is largely silent. It seems that only Republican misdeeds are met by scorn and indignation. Conservatives have justifiably grumbled about this glaring double standard for years, but their objections have fallen on deaf years. It is a constant source of frustration for conservatives that liberal sins are downplayed, while Republican indiscretions, trivial or not, are gleefully flaunted.

Just imagine the headlines had a Republican Congressman written a letter to a Republican Attorney General demanding that the owner of a liberal website be prosecuted and imprisoned for dissent. Cries of fascism would have been ubiquitous. The liberal dissident would have popped up on every network and cable news show and celebrated as a hero. Yet because Grayson is a Democrat, there is little news coverage and almost no outrage.

Alan Grayson may be a national disgrace, but the media's gross under-reporting of the Congressman's abhorrent antics is just as disgraceful.        

The Art of Hypocrisy

As sex scandals involving celebrities and politicians pile up, a common theme is emerging among liberal commentators: conservatives who commit adultery are hypocrites, because conservatives defend traditional values and the institution of marriage. Therefore, the argument goes, the sin of adultery is more heinous if committed by a conservative.

Joy Behar is just the latest liberal commentator to make this (almost) unbelievably idiotic argument. Tune into MSNBC, and you will hear David Shuster, Contessa Brewer and a host of left-wing commentators play the hypocrisy card.

Unbeknownst to most liberals making the claim, the implication of the hypocrisy argument is straightforward: liberals like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, et al, who commit adultery are not hypocrites, because they are pro-adultery. That's right, if conservative adulterers are hypocrites because they stand up for traditional values (like marital fidelity), then liberal aduleters must not be hypocrites because they don't think that adultery is wrong. The absurdity of this argument is self-evident. Liberal adulterers, like their conservative counterparts, always repent and usually issue a public apology. Naturally, the mea culpa suggests that liberal adulterers do in fact recognize that adultery is unethical. Therefore, they are equally as "hypocritical" as the conservative adulterers.

Because conservatives tend to highlight the importance of family values more consistently than liberals, liberals take a perverse pleasure in exposing conservative adulterers (even those who don't run on social issues) as hypocrites. This is understandable. But it certainly does not then follow that liberals aren't being hypocritical when they commit adultery. I have never heard a liberal adulterer caught in the act proclaim that he is "pro-adultery", and therefore immune to criticism. Perhaps it makes sense to hold conservatives who pontificate about family values to a higher standard than liberals, but it is ludicrous to suggest that liberal adulterers aren't hypocrites. Until we hear a liberal politician proclaim that he is pro-adultery, we can safely conclude that all aduleters, regardless of political affiliation, are technically hypocrites.        

Politicizing War

On last Sunday's Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory asked Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour about the possible political implications if President Obama does not send the additional 40,000 troops requested by his commanders. Here's an excerpt from the exchange:

GOV. BARBOUR: ...And I will tell you now, for myself and I think a lot of Republicans, if the president will stand up, make the tough decision to send more troops, Republicans like me will stand up and say the president's doing the right thing. He doesn't have to worry about Republicans trying to politic this. If he stands up and does the right thing that the military's asked for, we will say good for you, Mr. President.

GREGORY: And if he doesn't? Are you saying the opposite is true, that it'll become a political issue?

GOV. BARBOUR: It shouldn't become a political issue.

GREGORY: At all? Even if he doesn't?

GOV. BARBOUR: I don't think it should become a political issue.

GREGORY: Because implicit in that is if he doesn't do the right thing it will be.

GOV. BARBOUR: I'm one of those who believes in foreign policy, the politics ought to stop at the border's edge. And I've always believed that. I believed it when I was in Ronald Reagan's White House and I believe it no matter who the president is. Now, when the presidential comes--presidential campaign comes; but right now, if the president does the right thing here, I'm going to applaud him. If he doesn't, I'm not going to criticize him.

David Gregory pressed Gov. Barbour on the point that the Afghanistan War might become "a political issue", implying that there would be something untoward about politicizing war. Gov. Barbour quickly dismisses this notion, reaffirming the traditional view that "politics stops at the border's edge."

While Mr. Barbour's view ought to be commended, one can't help but recognize the remarkable hypocrisy implicit in David Gregory's line of questioning. As anyone who followed the Bush Administration knows, the Democrats politicized the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars for years, making the unpopular Iraq war a central political issue in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. Criticizing Bush's handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars became the Democrats' pivotal line of attack against the Bush Administration as early as 2003. For David Gregory to suggest that it would be inappropriate for Republicans to use President Obama's handling of the Afghanistan War as a political weapon is disingenuous and intellectually dishonest, given the Democrats' and President Obama's track record of politicization.

There is also something to be said about the substance of the attacks against George Bush compared to the potential attacks against Barak Obama. In the early years of the Iraq War, Democrats criticized the Bush Administration for not sending enough troops into Iraq, while at the same time paradoxically arguing that it was the "wrong war at the wrong time". In later stages, Democrats were calling for a Congressionally-mandated withdrawal irrespective of the conditions on the grounds, fighting tooth and nail George Bush's counter-insurgency strategy, dubbed "The Surge", which among other things, called for more troops. In other words, the Democrats weren't merely against the tactics employed in the Iraq War; they were against the war itself. At the same time, Democrats were calling for more resources to be committed to Afghanistan, which President Obama argued was the central front in the War on Terror.

Fast forward to today. President Obama's field commanders are implementing the President's counter-insurgency strategy unveiled in March of this year. General McCrystal has called for at least 40,000 additional troops to help accomplish the mission that President Obama and the Democrats argued for years was at the heart of the War on Terror. While we await the President's decision, David Gregory wants to caution the Republicans against politicization. But if the President does in fact not meet the demands of his field commanders, how can anyone blame the Republicans for the War becoming a political issue? After all, it was President Obama who argued for more resources to be committed to Afghanistan, while calling for the end of the mission in Iraq. In his years as an NBC reporter and now as the moderator of Meet the Press, did David Gregory or anyone else in the left-leaning press question the ethics of the Democrats' politicization of the Iraq War?

Haley Barbour's old school attitude that politics stops at the border's edge may be noble and in the best interest of civility in politics, but that sentiment was entirely vitiated during the Bush Administration by Democrats seeking to exploit for political gain a difficult and increasingly unpopular war. If Republicans use the President's decision (or indecision, as the case maybe right now) on Afghanistan for political gain, it will be markedly different only in the sense that whereas Democrats criticized President Bush for trying to win the Iraq War, Republicans would be criticizing the President for not fulfilling his campaign promises, not implementing his March strategy, and not pursuing victory.