From
The Eponymous Flower:
MOSCOW -- We're always encouraging fellow Catholics to keep physically fit and militant. Mickey Rourke isn't an exemplary Catholic, but he seems sincere, and he is setting an example.
Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke returned to the boxing ring Friday at the age of 62, defeating a fighter less than half his age in an exhibition bout.
Rourke sent 29-year-old Pasadena, California, native Elliot Seymour to the canvas twice in the second round before the referee stopped the fight.
Rourke prepared in a dressing room in front of a shrine featuring candles, images of saints, and photographs of his dogs. He said he had been in mourning for his recently deceased Chihuahua.
He took to the ring in a Stetson hat, a red-and-gold robe and shiny gold gloves, repeatedly crossing himself.
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From
Rush Limbaugh:
RUSH: When I predicted, ladies and gentlemen, that the American left
would soon begin its effort to ban professional football, I realized I'd
be greeted with a bunch of catcalls. And I knew that I would be greeted
with, "Come on, Rush, I've never heard anything more ridiculous! It is
the national pastime. It is the most popular sport in the history of
sports. It's the wealthiest. It's the richest. You gotta be crazy."
I said, "I know liberals. I know them! When the legal community gets
involved, when the plaintiff's bar gets revved up, when lawsuits start
flying about concussions and all that, it's over, folks. I'm telling
you. It's just a matter of when." I thought it would be 15, 20 years.
But over the weekend, George Will (no liberal he) submitted a column
that was headlined in the New York Post, "Football's Growing Killer
Problem."
Basically George Will in his column says that football is
killing its players and cannot be fixed.
There is simply no way to change the game to make it safer and
maintain the game as it is. You can't take head contact out of football.
There's no way you can coach changes. For example, when I played
football in high school, they always taught you to see what you hit. Do
not lower your head as in a battering ram and go after somebody 'cause
that's spinal and neck compression. That's how you break your neck.
Don't do that. Always keep your head up and always see what you hit.
Okay. That was to prevent broken necks.
Well, what that led to was more and more concussions.
Because
guys are hitting each other with the crown of their helmet right there
on the front of the lobe, sometimes in the head of another player. Or
somebody gets kneed. His point is: You can't take this out of the game.
You cannot stop people getting concussions in this game as the players
are growing larger. He says, "In 1980, only three NFL players weighed
300 or more pounds." Last year, there were 352 players who weighed over
300, and three players who weighed over 350. And he says in his piece
they're as fast as cats. I mean, these guys aren't lumbering, doddering
old slobs. These are fast-moving and very quick. The kinetic energy that
they are generating is something the human body can no longer tolerate.
He talked about it on This Week Sunday as well. I'll pay you some sound
bites of that when we get back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, look, folks, we're gonna talk about football here for a
second, but I want you to hang in because this is cultural and this has
to do with the future of the country. This is not football
prognostication, it's not X's and O's. Stick with me on this. It's
important, and it matters. Not just George Will. George Will has a
column basically saying that football is killing its players, and it
can't be fixed. He opens the column: "Are you ready for some football?
First, however, are you ready for some autopsies?"
Now, there are a lot of other sports that feature concussions.
Boxing. You know one of the fastest growing sports out there is the
cage stuff, UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship. That stuff's growing
by leaps and bounds. I even hear the Southern Poverty Law Center likes
that sport. Rugby has concussions. Baseball has concussions. There
are injuries in every sport. But I'm telling you it's open season on
football. That's the thing. It's open season on football, and it's now
become bipartisan. It's crossed the partisanship divide with George
Will weighing in on it.
Let's go to the audio sound bite. He was on This Week. During the
roundtable, George Stephanopoulos, said, "All of us were actually struck
by what you wrote this week about football. Pretty simple but
staggering conclusion. You write that football can't be fixed." See,
we've gotten to point, football needs to be fixed. That's when it's
over. Football needs to be fixed. Who says it needs to be? Everybody
playing the game knows what they're signing up for. But, see, the
liberals, "This is purposeful, disfiguring. This is permanent brain
damage, and we're not a barbaric society. We can't allow this. We can't
have any risk."
Once
football can't be fixed, once football can't be perfected -- I even
heard Obama use the word, talking about our country and our
Constitution. It's imperfect, but it could be perfected. That's
liberal drivel. The so-called march to perfection, as my buddy Mark Levin wrote, Ameritopia,
which is a takeoff on utopia, this inexorable forward march to
perfection. But now they've determined football can't be perfected,
can't be fixed. Now, it's not just Will saying this. People on the
left came to this conclusion long before he wrote his piece. It can't
be fixed. Who says it has to? See, this is the point. Somebody
somewhere, I don't know if we're ever gonna find person zero in this,
decided football needed to be fixed. And I'll tell you who's gonna be
responsible if this actually happens, as I'm predicting years from now,
the media, the sports media, which thrives on the existence of the
sport, I mean guys and women, sportswriters, telecasters, broadcasters,
earn a living covering the sport, and they're the ones unwittingly --
well, I'll give you an example how.
One of the football websites that I read is ProFootballTalk.com.
It's a pretty good website. It's run by a good guy named Mike Florio.
Now, you guys are all aware of the bounty punishments on the New Orleans
Saints. If you're not, I'm not gonna waste time bringing you up to
speed. Basically they suspended the coach for a year, maybe for life,
because he was offering bounties to the players on his defense if they
would commit injuries that forced guys out of the game, to be carted
off, ambulanced out. They've got it on tape. There's arguments over
whether it actually happened or whether it was just motivational
technique, but the coach's words are on tape so he's in trouble and a
bunch of players have been suspended. One of them is a guy named
Jonathan Vilma, linebacker for the 'Aints suspended for a year.
Now, the Saints played the first preseason game last night against
the Arizona Cardinals, and the Cardinals' first offensive series, their
quarterback, Kevin Kolb, flushed out of the pocket, is tackled and a
clean hit, pulled a muscle, chest injury or something, threw an
interception, had to leave the game with an injury. And you know how
it's covered today? That is the kind of legal hit that the Saints were
being paid to make, according to the bounty. The whole way the game is
going to be covered now is going to change. Here you had a tackle,
nothing more than a tackle. A guy pulled a muscle on a tackle, a
quarterback flushed out of the pocket. But, no, now it's gotta be
reported. That's the kind of hit that the Saints were legally engaging
in and were exchanging dollars for.
The whole universe in which this game is now played and being
reported on is forever changed. The media will not be able to let this
bounty thing go. Every tackle, somebody on TV, "You think that would
have been something that the Saints would have paid for? Is that a
legal hit or an illegal hit? Do you think they were trying to put that
guy out of the game?" Once that stuff starts, there's no fixing that,
either. So here's George Will and Stephanopoulos says, "You write the
game can't be fixed."
WILL: The human body is no longer built for the kinetic energy of
the National Football League and even further down to high school. In
1980, George, there were three NFL players over 300 pounds. Today there
are three over 350 pounds, and 352 people on the 2011 rosters weighed
more than 300 pounds. Over 20 yards, which is where a lot of football is
played, these guys are as fast as cats, fast as running backs, and the
kinetic energy is producing what is called chronic traumatic
encephalopathy, CTE, get used to that, because it's going to be the
subject of lawsuits and other things. The crucial word is "chronic."
Repeated, small but repeated, blows to the head, the brain floating in
the pan in the skull, now we know causes early dementia and other
problems.
RUSH: This is a Sunday morning political show, roundtable, This Week
with George Stephanopoulos. This is the roundtable on a political
Sunday morning show discussing all of this stuff in football. That
football can't be fixed. The Constitution can be, huh? The
Constitution can be fixed. Football can't be fixed. Let's throw hockey
into the mix here. Why football, folks? Why is nobody wanting to ban
hockey or UFC or boxing because of concussions or anything else, why?
Why only football? And why is it now being said football can't be
fixed? And, say, once the plaintiff's bar gets involved here, and
that's the tort lawyers, and there are massive lawsuits that have been
filed... I don't know that I'm ever gonna be able to watch this game the
same now. I'm gonna have to turn the sound off, I guarantee you.
The commentary of this game is forever changed now. Everything will
be looked at in the context of the Saints bounty program. "You think
that woulda been a hit that woulda fallen under the jurisdiction of the
commissioner to levy a penalty? That hit, what if that were a bounty
program involved here?" And then the analyst will weigh in on this, and
then the highlight show. You wait 'til the first quarterback or
anybody hit with a concussion gets taken out of the game, it's gonna be
covered almost like a gangland shooting is covered, like a crime's been
committed, and how can we sit here and watch this and enjoy it?
Then wait 'til they get the racial component in it. Wait 'til they
figure out that 75% of players are black and therefore 75% of the damage
is being incurred by blacks and guess who's being entertained by it and
guess who owns the teams. Wait 'til that component gets thrown in.
Folks, I tell you it's gonna happen sooner than I thought and you're
gonna end up saying, "Well, Rush knew what he was talking about." And
just like in the old SUV days, "We thought Rush had finally gone over
the edge, but he hadn't. Knows exactly what he's talking about."
Because I know liberals.
Now, I don't know what George Will's doing. (sigh) It just shows it's
crossed the boundary now. It's just crossed the partisan divide. Here's
Stephanopoulos: "Well, so what's to be done about it, George, if it
can't be fixed 'cause right now there's no evidence the American public
is wanting to turn away from the game."
Ah, that's right! Now, that's
the next thing to happen, folks. The next thing to happen is for efforts
to be made to get you not to watch this barbaric bloodbath. To compare
you to someone who's no different than the ancient Romans who gathered
in the Colosseum to watch the Christians given to the lions.
You'll be no different than those bloodthirsty people back then. "How
dare you want to watch something like this? How dare you pay to see it?
It's just like a car race. You go there to see these injuries, don't
you, you reprobate fans?" Stephanopoulos: "George, there's no evidence
the American public is ready to turn away.
So what can be done about
it?" See, now "something" needs to be done. Okay, that's where we are.
That's where liberals take us: Something has to be done. Football needs
to be fixed, but it can't be.
Here's George Will's answer...
WILL: It'll start down below. It'll start at the small level of kids
playing football in grade school and then in high school. We now, in our
hyper-cautious parenting, put crash helmets on children riding
tricycles.
PANEL: (snickering)
WILL: How many of these parents are gonna let their children go out
and play football once they learn -- again -- the chronic, the
cumulative effect of small-brain trauma?
RUSH: There you have it, folks. There you have it. Okay. Great while
it lasted. I'm glad that I lived the bulk of my life when football was
what it was.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is Paul. Great to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I wanted to comment on your take about the NFL. I
think you may have it all wrong on this one, and rarely I disagree.
RUSH: I'm not surprised. I fully expect to be a lone wolf on this until it happens.
CALLER: This is my reasoning, Rush, and I'll tell you why. It's got
to do with, they got a built-in protection with college football, and I
say that because your instincts are right. There's gonna be a lot of
hand-wringing and new ideas and liberal ideas and kook theories about
changing football or getting rid of it. But the fact of the matter is
college football is the huge source of revenue for the athletic
department, and those athletic departments take that money and are
giving it to sports like women's polo, table tennis, badminton.
RUSH: I understand all that.
CALLER: These colleges fly these girls teams around from state college to, say, Notre Dame for a badminton competition.
RUSH: I'm not predicting that the game's gonna be banned. That's not
how this is going to happen. They're not gonna ban the game. What's
gonna happen -- and I don't know how many years it's gonna take, but --
is it's going to eventually lose (slowly but surely) its fans, its
audience. There's going to be a deterioration at all levels. I'll be
happy to detail how I think this is going to manifest itself. It's
already begun. It's already begun. "Football can't be fixed. There's
something inexorably wrong about it." It does generate a lot of money,
but, remember: The liberal left on college campi hate that.
But that's only a minor factor.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, I know I'm all alone on my prediction about what's gonna
happen with football. And as the program unfolds, maybe if anybody asks
me anything further about it, I'll tell you how I think this all is
gonna happen. There's not gonna be a ban. That wouldn't work. Everybody
knows it wouldn't work. There wouldn't be a ban. Fans love the game too
much. So the people that want this game banned, the people that want it
gotten rid of -- which is silly because it's a cash cow for so many
people, but we're talking liberals, now. Look at how popular boxing used
to be. Look at how popular smoking used to be.
Tort lawyers got involved in both. Tort lawyers are involved here
now. Liberals are involved: "Game needs to be fixed. Game can't be
fixed, though. Oh, it can't be fixed!" Mike Ditka says you can't take
the hits out of it. Take the face mask off, Ditka says! You want to stop
head injuries, take the face mask off. There are all kinds of ideas
like that. That's not gonna satisfy. Once the game "needs to be fixed,"
that's it. So how are the people that want this game irreparably harmed
going to pull it off?
I know how they're gonna do it.
They're gonna make you sick and tired of watching it.
And if you want further details, I'll provide 'em. But there's other stuff going on out there that I want to weigh in on.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, here, folks, right here. Right here, just got it, Wall
Street Journal. Headline: "Is It Time to Retire the Football Helmet?"
Yes, my friends, the march is on.
END TRANSCRIPT
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