Tom Finneran: Today’s Trio: the Patriots, Marriage, and Sex
Friday, January 17, 2014
The Patriots will win this Sunday out in Denver. Take it to the bank. The endless and unanswerable question of who is the better quarterback—Tom Brady or Peyton Manning—overlooks the fact that the Patriots are a more resilient team, better coached, better prepared, and ideally suited to play from the role of underdog. The team simply loves the psychological role of playing David against Goliath. And any team that has Tom Brady calling signals has quite a slingshot in its hands. Watch out, Goliath.
We have a weekend of interesting playoff games. The four teams still standing are the four best teams in the league. That has been apparent since mid-November. There are no Cinderella teams this year, teams who have caught the favors of the football gods and ridden on improbable twists and turns to reach the finals. Instead, this year, we have four very good football teams, teams which we thought would be among the best during preseason and which have overcome the bad breaks, bad calls, and inevitable injuries of every NFL season. It’s been a long season. Let the real games begin.
Oh yeah, players to watch...number 12, of course. Logan Mankins too. He is one rough tough customer. Chandler Jones. He’s a superb athlete, fast, strong, and smart, just hitting his prime. Rob Ninkovich is another rugged hombre, a real disruptor. And Stephen Gostkowski, kicking at that altitude? He might kick a couple of sixty-yarders on Sunday.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThen it’s off to the Super Bowl for New England once again. They’ll have to watch out for the 49ers. I think they’re the best of the bunch. Enjoy the game.
On marriage
Marriage, the most important social arrangement and institution in the history of mankind, has been under ferocious assault for more than fifty years. For a great article on marriage, poverty, and “income inequality”, see Ari Fleischer’s recent column, How to Fight Income Inequality: Get Married.
Stark raving mad gender studies majors will undoubtedly attack Mr. Fleischer’s column as evidence of the “oppressive patriarchy”. They might rather consider the real facts of real life. They might even consider ending the celebration and glorification of single parenthood. There is precious little to celebrate or glorify in social arrangements which inform a father of his irrelevance or a child of his lesser importance. The statistics cited by Mr. Fleischer are staggering in their import. Not surprisingly, the poverty rate for married families is encouragingly low. To even less surprising effect, the poverty rate for unmarried or single parent families is appallingly high. Here’s where the real war on women is occurring.
As the movie, music, and television industries continue to assault women and degrade marriage, it’s a wonder that feminist organizations do not wage all-out boycotts of their depraved products. Might we for once in our lifetimes agree that the sexualization of our children, their clothes, and our culture is to be shunned by all? Forget about the verbal antics of Limbaugh or Maddow and their imitators. Those are sideshows to a war that should be fought and can be won. And a true social and cultural emphasis on school first, marriage second, and children third would go a very long way to addressing the poverty of our time.
On sex
Charles Blow’s recent column in the New York Times, Sex Is Not Our Problem, addresses related social and cultural concerns. Upon my first reading of his column, I was prepared to take great issue with his conclusion and state most emphatically that he is absolutely wrong and that sex, teen and pre-teen and non-commital sex, is precisely our problem. In what appears to be an effort to seem nuanced and sophisticated, Mr. Blow misses the opportunity to condemn in most emphatic terms the tidal wave of inappropriate sexual activity in America. Come on Charles, let’s be judgemental here. It’s wrong, obviously wrong, and we should not meekly accept it as inevitable. Perhaps Mr. Fleischer and Mr. Blow can be persuaded to have a debate about the issue and its destructive effects.
Two truly cringeworthy utterances appear in Charles’ column. First, his reference to the “pathology of patriarchy” is a politically correct bow to the nonsense of our age. If Charles truly believes that “patriarchy” is a problem in American society, then why surrender the opportunity to be critical—i.e., judgemental—about reckless males and their sexual conduct? Feel free to cast some shame here. It’s long overdue. And citing “complex areas of causation” is a cop-out. Marriage must have primacy and all of us should say so in chorus.
Finally, Charles talks about us “forcing boys to adhere to a perilously reading of masculinity which becomes a form of “oppression all dressed up as awesomeness”. Huh? Speak for yourself Charles. No son or grandson of mine will ever be forced to adhere to such narrow paths. Of course the “oppression/awesomeness” quote comes from a college professor, no doubt tenured. And this is what you pay $60,000 a year for in tuition. My God, what a rip-off. But that’s a topic for another day...
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