It was the talk of the professional sports world last week:
not a game or a win or a great catch but a story about a bully. Two players on
the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins were caught in a bullying battle.
One was suspended by the team. One quit the team.
Bullying. That’s when one person with more power attacks another
person with less power. Uses hurtful
words. Does hurtful things.
Intimidates. Embarrasses.
Humiliates. Physically assaults a weaker person.
That the bullying happened in an NFL locker room has some
scratching their heads, asking “Really?”
This is a sport filled with big, tough, grown up men whose job it is to
hit other big, tough grown up men with their bodies. Both the bully and the bullied each weigh
more than 300 pounds. “Get over it,”
some argued, especially most of the fellow NFL players who weighed in with
their opinions. “That’s just what we
do,” they protested. “It’s our way. You don't understand.”
But then read the transcript of the voicemail that the football
bully left for his victim and the ugliness of it becomes clearer. Here’s the
gist of it, heavily edited.
"Hey, wassup, you
half [racial slur] piece of ----. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10
weeks….I'm going to slap your ----ing mouth. I'm going to slap your real mother
across the face [laughter]. ---- you, you're still a rookie. I'll kill
you."
Sounds like your basic bully to me, regardless of the
supposed acceptability of that threat, rationalized because it happened within the
testosterone filled private fraternity of professional sports. I don’t buy that flimsy excuse.
Bullying is just bullying. Period. In a locker room. In a classroom. In a
workplace. Yes, even in a church
sometimes. Bullying. A boss against an underling. The oversized middle school
kid against her smaller classmate. An
abusive husband against his wife.
I don’t know what makes me most angry about this story. There's
the bullying itself, which feels so engrained in our world, especially among
kids. Straights against gays. Jocks against unpopular kids. I was bullied through middle school. I remember how lonely and utterly dispiriting
it was to be excluded, targeted, and pushed around. Bullying is never harmless
or “just a joke” or innocent. There is
always a devastating and often lasting emotional toll on the victim.
Then there’s the multitude of ways folks can bully each
other now. Long gone are the days when the only place a person might fear a
bully was face to face: on the playground or at the bus stop or in a workplace.
Now bullies work in cyberspace. Read some of the nasty, rude, stupid, awful,
hateful comments on Facebook. There’s bullying
by texting too. In cyber society anything goes, a perfect setting for bullying,
anonymous and almost wholly unmonitored.
Bullying can even be deadly. Twelve year old Rebecca Sedwick
of Lakeland, Florida committed suicide last month after
being cyber-bullied by two classmates for two years. Rebecca left school, tried
her best to start new. Her parents tried their best to protect her. But her attackers were unrelenting and
pursued her, and yes they were middle school girls too, who now may end up
being charged with a crime. Or ask any gay or lesbian teen, prime targets for
bullies. They go through social hell regardless of how “enlightened” we like to
imagine the world has become.
I just don’t get bullying. Never have. Never will. My faith in
God and common human decency tells me that to bully another human being is in
some ways the worst sin of all, because it is inherently unfair, mismatched,
and cruel. How hard is it for the big to hurt the little, or the underdog to be
pushed aside by a big man on campus?
I wish I had the answer as to why bullying is still so
common. Is it just human nature for the powerful to always target the
powerless? Is it the violent spirit which marks the United States, a nation with almost
as many guns (270 million) as people (314 million)? Is it our no holds barred mass media? One mouse
click and a kid can see the most abhorrent, obscene, and violent of images,
words, ideas. Is it our mega-competitive
society with so many kids and adults playing and watching sports, all the time,
with just one goal--to always win, right?
There is hope. Parents, teachers, students and
administrators are much more enlightened about bullying than when I was young.
Most schools have anti-bullying programs in place. More and more kids are learning how to constructively
confront bullying and stick up for their classmates.
So maybe this tale of NFL bullying will have a good
ending. Maybe by being discussed and
disseminated so widely, this story will help us finally see bullying for what
it always has been. Unequivocally, undoubtedly, and absolutely wrong in all
circumstances. Doesn’t make a difference if it’s between two pro athletes or
two kids.
Bullying. No excuse for it. None. End of discussion.
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