Yeah, silly, because people have allowed themselves to be deceived for millennia. Twelve years won't cure the human condition. Jesus Christ can, offering an individual forgiveness for the deceitfulness that has reigned in each of our hearts, but that's another story.
After Tyreek Hill was given a clean slate by the NFL yesterday, I went ahead and followed some threads on the web, and sure enough, as I surmised, I saw all kinds of deceptive language thrown about. There were guys at the mainline sports sites spewing all sorts of deprecatory garbage about Hill. One of the worst culprits was the paper of record in Kansas City, The Star, the writers of which seemed to be hellbent on protecting its reputation when before it had so thoroughly shredded Hill the biggest new aye-hole it could.
It is nothing new, then, that people behave in ways that are the most profitable, and really, let's face it, news organizations thrive on drama and controversy. Think The New York Times and all of its subsidiaries -- you know, NBC, CNN, The Washington Post -- think they don't like Donald Trump? No, they love him, because shredding him a thousand aye-holes a day sells their copy.
In going through much of the other remarks shared on the web I came across an interesting meme supposedly put out by Clark Hunt's daughter. She'd included a link to a story from Medium, here it is. It is terrific, and put together, apparently by the Chiefs Kingdom Editorial Board, which appears to be an independent journalistic enterprise interested in Chiefs things. Again, in the interest of truth, I'm not sure about some of the attribution, but I want to get it right and have tried to.
Anyway, there is the implicit idea that Hunt's daughter was responding to criticism of her father, the owner of the Chiefs, mostly from those loud brazen sports blappers from prominent sports sites who think they could influence the NFL to mete out the worst punishment possible, and much of the vitriol has been directed at Hunt: "How could you allow such a miscreant to be on the Chiefs?!" -- you know. The question is, have those so-called journalists really looked into what's been happening with Hill? Have they really wanted to know the truth?
If you really look into the entire matter, it appears the truth is that Hill's only crime was that he got involved in the Crystal Espinal family to begin with. Was Hill a fool for letting himself get in too deep with this girl and her family? Unquestionably. Did Hill do abusive things to her in some form or another out of his frustration? It appears that may have happened, but the truth about that is, what is our role in assessing that?
In my last post I'd mentioned that it'd be best for their boy, and wow, apparently they now have twins, if Hill and Espinal were happily married. This was not a remark made to imply that Hill and Espinal must take care of business at the end of the shotgun. If the Medium story is true, the best thing for Hill is that he remain separated from a woman who has been plainly exploiting him and his income-earning capacity.
My real point in all of this is they really should never have been together in the first place. Really, how many influential pundits are making mention of the fact that the two never should have been sleeping together to begin with? From what I've seen that number is a big zero. And yet we let these things slide because so many professional athletes shack up with gals when they're not married, and yet, I thought we were all supposed to be into protecting people's sexuality and integrity and all that? You could see the difficulties that arise from abuse of this principle all over the Medium story.
So what is best for the boy, and his new siblings the twins? That should have been decided years ago, and helped along by powerful societal influences who do actually promote the value of marriage and family and don't just pathetically virtue signal all the time. But for now? We've all sadly conceded that some child services office will be deciding that, and yet I've got the idea that there is still tremendous turmoil about who gets what regarding the child custody and care arrangements.
There is truth about so many other things that require us to look deep within ourselves to see if we can actually address it. Some will legitimately call out us Chiefs fans for richly supporting a sport that causes men to have such debilitating injuries. I totally understand that. Or even more telling is by our patronage of such a sport we enable the behavior we so deplore among professional athletes. Are women best served in this environment? What about Crystal Espinal's alleged motives for seeking a relationship with Hill?
On the other hand, can we enjoy this fun diversion called pro football and expect the people in it to conduct themselves with some measure of decorum? Do we expect them to be choirboys and girls and if they aren't at what point do we cross the line of censure without being hypocrites? At what point do we say "Yeah!" or "Nah!" to a given behavior and it simply becomes a way for us to show we're better than someone else? At what point do we realize that talking about it so much, so many of us now able to rage through the cybersphere, is just a legitimate way to get an innate but often unseemly gratification, fulfilling our need to feel like we're being heard in a community no matter how idiotic our statements may be?
Is there truth in these things?
Most definitely.
It's just, can we see them, and confront them...?
If only because we do want to genuinely love our neighbor whether it is a pro football star or a Twitter follower?...
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