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The Most Obnoxious Brat in All of Sports (and that's really saying something!)

by Tom Laughlin

  Two outrages today – and though they seem widely disparate, they are intimately connected.

Yawning in the Face of High Treason
Though Washington was described as the “pigs at a trough” way back in the times of our Founding Fathers, it is so much worse today than ever that it can’t be measured on any corruption and greed scale we have available. Previously I discussed how unbelievable it was that the most powerful lobbyists in Washington being paid millions of dollars to develop trade with Red China were brought into the White House and made the Head of National Security (Sandy Berger), Commerce (Ron Brown), etc, etc.. I also pointed out that only someone with a lobotomy does not know the two ways this immediately endangers our national security and will cost America dearly, including the lives of young people who will have to go and die to support this greed like our young people went to die in Viet Nam to support the greed of Bectel and the oil companies who wanted the oil off the China shelf. (During the Viet Nam war the most profitable Bank of America branch was in Saigon, and that didn’t include the massive laundering of drug money.)
  China is absolutely certain to become the next world’s superpower both economically and militarily, and they are hell bent on developing nuclear warheads that will reach American cities in the same way Russia’s now do.
  They are eager to make money by selling our nuclear secrets, capabilities, and computer technology to anyone who can pay the price, including our longtime enemies Iran and Iraq – further destabilizing the world and creating certain future Kosovos all over the Middle East.
  Though I was aware of how bad the treason was going on, until I saw 60 Minutes the other night, I had no idea how open and flagrant was the wholesale selling of the future of our children by the Clinton administration. As 60 Minutes showed, they’re not just selling plans and information, MacDonald Douglas, now Boeing, sold an entire missile building plant in Columbus, Ohio, to China, and moved the entire factory, lock, stock and barrel to Beijing. The entire plant! (Of course thousands of Americans were put out of work as a by-product.) What’s worse, they could have gotten $10 million for the equipment in the plant, but were forced to sell it to the Chinese at a 50% discount. The reason? Because MacDonald Douglas, now Boeing, had a $1 billion contract to make air transports for the Chinese, and as part of the standard way the Chinese do business with the criminals in the White House, is to demand as part of the deal, treason. Pure and simple. Sell us all these pieces of machinery that produce the missiles we want, and we’ll make you rich with a $1 billion deal. It’s bad enough we give them, for money of course, our secret technology for building nuclear missiles to aim at our country, we give them whole factories with which to build these missiles.
  But here’s the kicker. Nobody cares. Nobody! Nobody’s doing a damned thing about it. Nobody! Not in Washington, not in the media, and not anywhere else. Nobody cares. It’s one big yawn.
  Does that terrify you as much as it does me – and remember, this is barely the tip of the iceberg. This is just what we are learning about what’s been going on during the Clinton Administration. God only knows what else we’ll discover in the months ahead. Just as God only knows why we, the American people who are being betrayed, don’t give a damn. Maybe it’s because we don’t think we can do anything about it-- that we no longer have any power over our government?

The Most Obnoxious Brat in all of Sports
– and that’s Saying Something!
  How does the most spoiled brat in sports tie into the terrifying selling away the future of our country by conscienceless profiteers? Simple, read on.
  Carl Jung has said that there is no such thing as a group of people, a class or society. Everyone of them is made up of individuals, and it is what is going on in each individual, both in their conscious and unconscious psyches that counts. And what's going on in sports today is a very accurate x-ray into what's going on with the unbelievably widespread corruption and greed that now has become a way of life in this White House, Congress and current government.
  Just as a boil is a symptom of a deep infection, or a lump in the breast says there's a growth inside that must be checked, so too, what's happening in sports today, and happening on national television, is a symptom of everything that is going wrong in the underbelly of the American psyche.
  Years ago if an athlete got into any kind of trouble or difficulty, he was immediately suspended from the school, from the team, or from professional sports. No one on earth believes more passionately than I to giving people a second and a third chance provided they prove they want to change when they get that second and third chance. However, proliferation of "gangsters" into sports today is nothing short of amazing. Open the sports section of the LA Times and where they have the bulletin column telling us what's going on in each sport with a special section for basketball, baseball, soccer, they now have on a daily basis a section called "Juras Prudence" which tells about the arrests, the arraignments, or sentencing of hundreds of athletes per years, from high school level through professional sports.
  When I went back a few years ago to the University of Nebraska to help Coach Tom Osborne and team with their Heisman Trophy candidate, Laurence Philips, who had beaten up his girlfriend, there were four players on the Nebraska National Football team who were on bail having been indicted for offenses ranging from armed robbery to having killed someone with a gun -- and there they were still playing football.
  The badmouthing, the unbelievable filthy mouths of athletes while they are playing is something unprecedented in American sports. Sure, in baseball and football there were tauntings from the sidelines, but nothing Ö absolutely nothing Ö compared to the unrelenting, vicious, ugly, nasty insults that certain athletes not only do throughout the entire game, but actually pride themselves on doing it, and none is more offensive than Reggie Miller. Even people sitting at courtside like Spike Lee, have become embarrassments, but they have no idea they have embarrassing they are. They think it makes them manly and tough. (I often wondered what would happen to one of these non-stop motor mouths if they had to leave the field of play and go into a place and go ten rounds with the people they were insulting, especially players who were as bit, if not bigger, than themselves.) These are the acts of cowards. You can taunt and harass and insult and degrade as long as you know you won't be hurt back, especially hurt physically. Little men setting a role model, not only for our youth, but for all of us. Some dimwitted company even has a commercial with Spike Lee showing him insulting everybody he sees as he rides through New York City in a carriage.

What is the root cause of all of this?

Money and greed.

  Which brings us to Martina Hingis, the most spoiled brat in all of sports -- and don't give me that she's only an 18 year old kid. Go to the Viet Nam Memorial Wall. The average age of those heroic men and women that gave their lives in a war so corporate America could make more profits, was only 19, which means many of them were only 17 and 18. And they were out there in the jungles filled with terror and death, proving that at that age you can act responsibly and carry the burdens of an adult man or woman.
  Martina Hingis makes more money in tennis than anyone ever dreamed was possible. And she is the leader of the new "brat pack" of women tennis players who have gotten publicity and headlines by not only bad mouthing their fellow players, but doing so with a level of viciousness and humiliating remarks that are simply the expression of a very deeply disturbed psyche.
  Why is it tolerated? Because they are making money for the promoters. I know this first hand. I was a highly paid college athlete, in fact I had to take a pay cut when I turned professional. That's how much money was paid to college athletes back then and what's been paid every single week since then. My wife and I should know because we funneled thousands of dollars to these athletes in the ways that all alumni do and have done since the sport began. However, with million dollar contracts available through television, the money being shoveled at so-called amateur athletes starting in high school and college is beyond anyone's imagination who is not on the inside and knows how it works.
  In addition to the money, these athletes can do anything -- anything. There is nothing you can't do on a college campus that the coaching staff won't get you out of. And I personally can bear witness to that in many ways. These athletes walk around in an unreal world where the rules don't apply, even the laws don't apply. They can do anything they please, and because they are useful to people making money off of them, they will get away with it.
  Which brings us to the worst display of spoiled brat, lack of sportsmanship I have ever seen in all my lifetime of watching sports.

Martina Hingis in the French Open.

Prior to the Open, her remarks about Steffi Graf were so crude, so disgusting, so vicious, she should have been taken behind the wood shed and given a spanking for just saying them. But of course they make good copy and bring attention to the tournament that the sponsors are paying for, so these kind of things are encouraged, not discouraged.
  At the French Open, Hingis, after degrading Graf in a way that was infuriating to any neutral third party, began to choke in the final set. She began to show, like all these bullies and spoiled brats, underneath there was no real substance, no real character. Her tacky exterior was just to cover up for underneath she is a terrified little girl ... but in her case, a little girl who has been spoiled rotten from Day One, because obviously her mother saw big bucks in her, as all these parents do who try to live their frustrated athletic ambitions through their children, starting when the kids are five years old and pushed into their first Little League or soccer team.
  When her sportsmanship began to anger the crowd and they began to boo her, Hingis began to cheat, always the last resort of a coward. First she pretended she had to take a bathroom break to try to upset Steffi's rhythm. Cheap shot, but okay, let's go on with the match. Then when the pressure really got bad, she tried the most egregious act of cheating I've ever seen in a major tennis tournament -- she tried a dirty underhand slice serve -- stating clearly that she no longer had the stomach to try to win this fair and square. When the crowd rightfully booed her for it and turned totally against her, she went even more into pieces -- but still suffering the delusion that she's so important and could do no wrong, in defiance of the crowd, she tried this cheating underhanded serve a second time. Now get ready for this. After it went out she came to complain to the umpire that the reason this pitiful attempt to cheat went out was because the crowd booed.
  Ponder that for a moment. The shot was already hit by the time the crowd realized what she had done and began to boo. So how could the crowds booing make a ball that had already been hit go out? But that's her nature. These kids grow up feeling everything on earth should bend to them. There is no reality but what they wish, what they want, what they demand, and when life -- reality itself -- doesn't cater to their every whim like their parents do, their agents do, or the people making money off them do, they get furious and go into a spoiled brat temper tantrum.
  Which is exactly what Hingis did after the match. Instead of staying out on the court graciuosly because this after all was the internationally televised major championship -- the French Open -- she stormed off the court like the spoiled kid who if he can't win, takes his ball and goes home. And Martina was not even going to come back for the ceremonies. The officials quickly told her mother that she had to get her back out there, so her mother went in and told her that if she didn't show up for the closing ceremony she could be ruined.
  Hingis comes out clutching her mother, sobbing uncontrollably. This is an 18 year old who lost a tennis tournament, who acted in a way that was more infuriating and disgusting than I've ever seen any athlete act, and was being booed from the crowd justly for so doing, and she's crying to her mama, "Mommy, they were mean to me. They didn't let me win."
  But that's not the end of it. She later had to play in the finals for the women's doubles. And afterwards said that if her partner in the doubles hadn't been her close friend, Anna Kournikova, she would not have played.
  Think about that for a moment. Whoever her other partner may have been, that partner, getting to the women's doubles in the French Open was probably one of the major triumphs of that person's life. It was of monumental importance to their status as a world's double's player, and to their ability to earn a living. But in a gesture that could only be said to be borderline pathological, she would have simply destroyed her partner's opportunity, perhaps the opportunity of her career, because she was still pouting because Hingis didn't get her way in the singles final.

So what's the connection between Martina Hingis, what's going on in sports today and the White House selling out the country for profits and campaign contributions?

Once again, money and greed.

The same greed that says "We don't care if the man is a criminal or the behavior is despicable beyond despicable, or if a man goes in and out of prison for a violent assault repeatedly, if there's money in him or her, we will not only overlook it, we'll try everything we can to get them out of it, and let them continue to set examples for the rest of the young people of the world, as well as for every one in sports promotion everywhere, anything goes as long as we can make money off of you."
  Imagine for a moment if this excessive bad mouthing would get you banned for five games, whatever. Imagine the kind of violent assaults that are done would get you banned. Imagine this kind of behavior by Martina Hingis would have seen her be banned from Wimbledon or tennis for six months. Gosh -- that might set a whole different standard of behavior. That might say that we can't give in to every impulse. That if you want to perform at the top levels you have to develop impulse control and behave as a civilized, decent human being. How different was the end to the French Open when Agassi and Medvedev hugged. And Medvedev praised Agassi to the sky. Those were adults. Those were real men -- just as Steffi Graf in her acceptance went out of her way to praise the little cheat and showed what a real woman behaves like and set a standard of class and why she is a world class champion and human being.
  What if instead of the cameras rushing to cover Reggie Miller and Spike Lee bad mouthing each other, Spike Lee was thrown out of the stadium?
There's one simple psychological principle that governs all of this behavior. When an athlete knows that a certain kind of behavior will not be tolerated -- that athlete will not indulge in it, no matter what. Period. End of discussion. You want proof? Boxing. Any fighter who hits a referee is banned for life. You notice you never see a fighter hit a referee. Oh yeah, you'll have a real psycho chew off someone's ear twice, but they'll never hit a referee. And what happened to the guy who chewed off the ear? Nothing really. He's back fighting making millions.
  You see, if there's money in it, it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter who you betray or how you cheat, it doesn't matter who you destroy, whether in sports or selling nuclear warheads to your enemy.
  That's what we've become.
  Martina Hingis is a symbol of her generation, just as Clinton and Sandy Berger are symbols of theirs. Clinton and Berger show us what we've become, Hingis and the other boorish spoiled brats permeating every corner of sports, show us what the future is.
  Of course, we could always do something about it. But once again -- does anybody care?

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