By now, most everyone knows that the pink ribbon stands for breast cancer awareness.  You can purchase all sorts of pink items from companies that claim a certain percentage will go towards breast cancer research – research that is looking to cure or at least prolong the lives of those affected.  (Although you do have to investigate exactly how much actually does go towards breast cancer research; some times, the company only donates 1% of the product sale price and some times the companies donate a much higher percentage.)  The NFL got into the act this year, celebrating breast cancer awareness month with pink-tinged footballs, player gear and the like.  Even though the NFL is spending $10 million this year to target women (mostly to get us to buy the merchandise), I applaud the move by the NFL.  It’s important that the male-dominated world of football recognize how deadly and common breast cancer is since it can affect the moms, wives, daughters, grandmothers, nieces and friends of both the players and the viewers. 

I guess the best thing is seeing the hard-nosed, tough guys of the NFL electing to wear pink.  It warms my heart because their small act shows a bit of solidarity with over 50% of the population who have to live with the worry every time their breasts ache or don’t feel right that it’s cancer.  Instead of worrying about whether the pink makes them look wussy (it doesn’t) or whether it will affect their tough guy image (it doesn’t), they grab the pink chinstraps and head onto the field.  I actually found myself rooting for teams where the majority of the guys wore pink, regardless of how I may dislike them under usual situations.  In fact, this past weekend solidified my negative opinion of the Chicago Bears quarterback, Jay Cutler, who I always thought was a whiny punk.  While nearly all of the Giants players sported the bright pink somewhere, whether on the shoes, chinstrap, towel, gloves or what have you, I noticed a distinct lack of pink on Cutler. That bothered me greatly and I found myself cheering on every one of those 10 sacks.  Cutler just rubs me the wrong way, he seems cocky and the type of guy who would weasel out of paying for the next round…his decision to not wear some aspect of pink made wonder whether he’s one of those guys (you know, the one that is too afraid to wear a certain color because it will make him look more like a wuss or worse, he’s kinda chauvanistic and doesn’t think breast cancer is a male concern).

The NFL is trying to raise its profile with women and this move is a good way to do it, for both business reasons and as human beings.  I found it profoundly disturbing that some men on chat boards are angry about the NFL promoting breast cancer awareness or whining that the NFL doesn’t do more for prostate cancer.  First of all, such attitudes are infuriating.  So what, just because men are playing football, they shouldn’t be concerned with issues that affect their wives, girlfriends, moms, grandmothers, daughters, nieces and friends?  Secondly, prostate cancer is one of the most survivable cancers with a 98% five-year survivability rate and 84% ten-year survivability rate.  I would be thrilled if we got to the point where breast cancer was so survivable.  Plus, most medical research on diseases that affect both men and women rarely study women in treatment options.  Medical research is so skewed towards researching how males are affected and how males are best treated that data on women is usually sketchy at best.  Breast cancer also affects men and research doesn’t just benefit women in this case.  Some men forget that they also have breasts…  I don’t begrudge advances made in any medical aspect because regardless, it may benefit my dad or mom or friends of both sexes.  I’m not going to be discriminatory because I’m a disgruntled chauvanistic jackass who thinks the world should revolve around my penis…

I’ll be watching next week’s NFL games with interest to see who has the pink and who has choosen not to wear it. And Cutler, after your disastrous showing last Sunday, you may want to change your luck and add a pink towel to the gear…

In this age of instant internet uploads of video and images, it appears that many people no longer think about the consequences of not only recording actions and thoughts for all posterity, let alone the fact that likely millions of people may view it.  I think back to the movie Sixteen Candles.  In the movie, the geek bets his friends that he can get with a girl.  The friends want proof and demand video.  The geek declines, stating, It’ll get duped and wind up on cable somewhere.  Back a few decades ago, if someone had a copy of something salacious, it would take a lot of effort to get it in front of millions of viewers.  Now, anything can go up on YouTube and go viral in a matter of hours.  Why people today think that they may have any privacy in videos or images they themselves upload “for their friends” is absurd.  But when someone takes an image or video of you without your knowledge, it does invade your privacy and it can cause you incredible harm.  And that to me is one of the more disturbing aspects of this story because this situation can happen to anyone.  And how do you react?  The victim in this case probably was wrestling with his sexuality.  It was not up to his roommate to video him and put him on display like that, regardless of whether he was with a male or female.  Personal acts should have the expectation of remaining personal, especially if you’re not the one to wield a video camera.

How have we sunk to this level that we think it’s sport to do these things?  How have we become a nation that is quick to film, quick to post and quick to ridicule?  The internet has created a monster, an anonymous-hate-posting, cruel taunting, uncivilized monster.  The comments that people post show that while the public face is civil, we seem to be growing more and more cruel and bigoted than ever before.  Being freed from the public scorn that would come with placing a name and face with these comments has turned people loose.  The next obvious step is a lack of concern for other people’s feelings.  By the way people post videos and photos of unsuspecting others and the snarky comments that are expected, it’s a wonder that we have any manners left at all.

The two freshman who were involved in the taping of the victim need to be punished for invading the young man’s privacy.  The unfortunate thing is that the death of this young, talented musician takes away someone who might have brought beauty into this world with his music.  We will never know how he could have affected the world.  But we do know how two 18 year-olds have affected this world, and it hasn’t been for the better…

Before we married, we owned a house together.  We did not have a shared account.  We split the financial burden where he paid the mortgage and I paid for everything else – utilities, phone, electric, food, you name it.  At the time, it was an ideal situation because my husband had never lived on his own before and I wasn’t all that convinced that we wouldn’t have the electricity turned off because he forgot to pay the bill.  I’m very fiscally responsible and I figured that I could nag him about one bill before it was due and keep the burden of responsibility for everything else.  Even after we married, I resisted combining our bank accounts.  I wanted to have some independence to spend the money I made the way I wanted to spend it.  I didn’t want to have to “clear” my purchases through him and I didn’t want to be resentful that I was saving for a vacation when he was off buying new golf clubs.  So, the system worked for us.

But then we moved and sold the house and against my better judgment, we combined accounts so we would have a “house” account and personal accounts.  Supposedly, the personal accounts could be savings for whatever we wanted to spend.  So, I put my birthday checks from the in-laws and money I had in my previous savings account into my new personal account.  And everything was fine until the house building thing started.  Suddenly, my husband was very concerned with how much money I had socked away.  He wanted me to turn over my personal savings into the house savings account.  I resisted.  That money is for me and my uses.  I don’t go to the beauty salon every week.  I don’t go shopping whenever the mood hits.  I don’t have any hobbies.  I save my money for one thing only and that is travel.  I don’t ask for much, but my vacations are not to be messed with and you would think that after 12+ years, my husband would know this…

So, there I was yesterday, thinking that I needed to schedule some vacation time before I scheduled my surgery.  I wanted to get away from the pressures of work and just relax, decompress.  My husband knew this was coming and yet when I broached the subject, he acted like a sulky child.  “You know, that money really should be in the house savings account.  We’re trying to save for a house.”  I nearly hit the roof.  Funny, but his concern about spending on discretionary things wasn’t so evident when he signed up for five fantasy football leagues and took himself back to our home state for a vacation of fantasy football drafts…Nor was his concern so evident when we signed up for a country club membership recently because he really, really wanted to be able to golf all the time.  As he reminded me, his only hobbies are golf and fantasy sports.  Uhh huh…Yet, the money for those things came out of the “house account”…

My only hobby is travelling and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be guilted out of my one pleasure in life.  I was so angry at him because even though he likes to pretend he’s the unselfish one in the relationship, he certainly seems to get his way more often than not.  But I’m not budging on this.  He sighed, telling me, I don’t know why you ask me because you’re going to do what you’re going to do.  Yes, but I’m polite enough to ask to make him feel part of the process, even though I’m technically spending my own money from Christmases, birthdays and presents – money that by all earlier agreements would be in the “personal account” category.  And this urge to travel is nothing new.  I had been doing this long before I met him so why he asks surprised that I find myself booking an airline ticket is ridiculous.  I think he’s being an ass about the whole thing and part of me just wants to verbally slap him with the fact that he’s being patently unfair.  I never say a word about his crazy spending on fantasy football entry fees or the fact that he has to fly 1200 miles to sit in a garage with his buddies, drinking beer, drafting players and eating bad food.  I don’t say anything about the money he just spent at the beginning of this month for that because I know it makes him happy.  And he used our “house” money to do these things.  But if his hypocracy continues, I will call him out on it and tell him what a jerk he’s being about the whole thing…

After I get back from my week at the beach, that is…

Devil’s Lake has no stream or river to carry away the water that accumulates within it.  Consequently, any rainfall or snowmelt that falls on the lake has not escape mechanism.  For years, the people near the lake have seen the water levels rise and the lake expanding its territory.  Scientists believe that the pattern of heavy rain and snow will likely continue for the next decade.  This news, coupled with the rise of the lake level, has prompted local residents to get some additional help to drain the lake.  As of 2010, the government (yes, all us taxpayers) has spent over a billion dollars to ease the threat by building dikes, making improvements to catchment basins and buying flooded property.  According to the story on yahoo news: that figure does not include a $27 million floodwater-diversion channel built by the state on the west end of the lake. It also costs $330,000 a month for the electricity for pumps to take 1 inch off the lake.  And yet, the lake level keeps rising.  Has anyone ever heard of the law of diminishing returns?

Even more interesting is the scientists finding that the lake has had a history of expanding and contracting throughout geological history.  Why people seem to think that this slice of time, this moment in time, should be any different simply because of the presence of man in the area is a head-scratcher to me.  As we often are reminded, nature has its own timeframe for its processes, regardless of whether humans like it or not.  I don’t know why we think we are so much more powerful than the very forces that allowed our species to evolve.

I feel for the residents who have been flooded out of their homes and property by the lake.  I guess losing your town to the voracious appetite of a lake that was once viewed as merely a recreational place would be pretty sad for the residents.  But I don’t see how the various schemes to pump the water away is not going to perhaps do even more harm than good to save these houses from the encroaching lake.  Humans have a pretty short memory but the terrible flooding and devastation brought to New Orleans was exacerbated in part by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer “enhancements” performed decades ago to the barrier wetlands and the Mississippi River.  Messing with nature usually comes back to bite us in the end and yet, we still seem to think that our human efforts to control and dominate nature don’t have unintended but disastrous consequences later.

The water from Devil’s Lake is freshwater, one of the most important resources in the world.  And the people of North Dakota obviously don’t understand how valuable a freshwater lake is, both now and in the future, particularly in years to come when rising sea levels inundate what was once fresh, potable water. (That is, if we haven’t already mucked it up with industrial pollution first.)  People around the world die every day as a result of not having a clean and nearby freshwater source.  Ironic, isn’t it that people in North Dakota haven’t figure out a way to profit from a growing natural resource that people will be killing over one day in the not-too-distant future?  Ironic, isn’t it that the local people want to banish this fresh water lake in order to reclaim property and homes lost to flooding?  What will future generations think about wanting to do away with a resource that is so valuable?

Early Tuesday morning, Jets WR Braylon Edwards was pulled over and charged with a DWI.  I find it particular disheartening that Edwards found himself in that situation considering that he used to play for the Cleveland Browns – who had Donte Stallworth on their roster when he drove drunk in Miami and killed a pedestrian after a night of drinking.  Now, if you are making over $6 million per year AND you live in New York City, there is absolutely no excuse for not calling a cab to drive your drunk ass home.  But if you are making over $6 million per year AND you live in New York City AND you had a co-worker who went to jail for killing someone while driving drunk AND your boss’ boss came down hard on people who violate the good conduct policy – well, you’re an idiot and a half if you don’t call a cab to drive you home.

Edwards was apparently ticked about the police pulling him over to having overly tinted windows as a pretense for checking his sobriety level.  To be honest, I’m sure that the tinted windows thing, or the loud stereo thing or whatever pretense that police use to check out a possibly impaired driver gets a lot of work.  But Edwards seemed more ticked about getting caught than he should have been about putting his ass in that position in the first place.  He had five people in the car – five people he could have shown a bit more responsibility for.  Two of the people in the car were teammates which leads me to another observation – if your entire livelihood depends on your ability to physically perform at a peak level, why the hell would you put your life and safety in the hands of an impaired driver?  If I was getting paid $6 million per year and I needed to make sure that I didn’t get into a car crash during the season, possibly injuring me and knocking me out for the season, I would have a limo company on speed dial!  My butt wouldn’t touch the seat of my car from July to February just make sure that if I got injured during the season, it sure as hell wouldn’t be as a result from me drinking and driving or riding with a drunk driver…

Coach Ryan, who hasn’t done much to garner my respect in the past few months, has pretty much given Edwards a slap on the wrist and told him that he couldn’t start for the Jets Sunday night against the Dolphins.  Really?  That’s his punishment?  Ryan must be one hell of a lenient dad too…I’m sincerely hoping that Roger Goodell is not nearly as permissive as Ryan, particularly in light of Stallworth’s horrific incident last year.  Obviously, the impact of a person’s death and his buddy being the cause was not enough to cause Edwards to reconsider his transportation options on Tuesday morning.  Maybe the financial impact of a suspension will get it through his head that being an NFL player does not make you invincible.  Driving impaired may not cause an accident this time, but honestly, do you want to tempt fate?  Particularly when you have the money and the influence to easily get other options.  I’m sure if Braylon Edwards called a limo company in NYC, he would get a limo pick-up a lot quicker than I would at 5 a.m. (Well, unless the dispatcher is a Giants fan…)

Now the attention turns to Goodell and what sort of punishment he may mete out for this lapse of judgment by yet another NFL player. Ryan, who claims to be embarassed by the behavior of his players, obviously does not understand what will motivate his players to think twice the next time they are in a situation like Edwards was Tuesday night.  Maybe they don’t have the fear of God over Goodell (although they should), but if they fear incurring the wrath of their coach, maybe that will spur at least one or two of the brigher guys in the locker room to opt for calling a cab the next time they have a few drinks and need to get home…

It was with interest that I noted Bob Costas talking about the concussion issue this past Sunday while on the sidelines of a game.  Football (and from here on out, when I say football, I don’t mean what we Yanks call soccer – I mean American football) is a violent sport.  Collisions are commonplace and the fans enjoy a hard hit.  I find myself even saying, Whoa, watch this hit.  But I get slightly sick when I see guys try to get up from a hit and stumble before falling back to the turf.  I get a little angry with myself for enjoying that open field tackle but then realize that the guy on the field isn’t sure where the heck he is.  It’s a contradiction that I can’t seem to resolve.

Football players are tough and they will do anything to keep that tough guy image.  In the past, concussions weren’t worried about for their impact on the long-term.  But research has proven that multiple concussions can impact a person with later Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other severe consequences.  This isn’t about having a headache for an hour and it’s gone.  This is life-changing, even life-shortening, consequences for the players.  A football player’s career may only last into his late 30s (or early 40s if you’re a kicker or Brett Favre, but they are the exceptions).  So after he leaves the game, what quality of life is left for a player that didn’t know or ignored the reprecussions of concussions?  It’s insidious because if a player hurts his knee, a doctor can tell him what kind of damage he is likely to see as a result of playing on the injured knee; but a doctor really can’t tell a player what damage he will ultimately end up doing to his brain by playing with a concussion. 

I found it interesting to see Costas’ segment when I had just watched the Cowboys game.  Jason Witten is a tight end for the Cowboys and is a favorite target of Tony Romo’s passes.  I think Witten is a good player.  But he suffered a concussion during the Bears game this past Sunday and his coaches (and perhaps the doctor) wouldn’t clear him to go back into the game.  Granted, the Cowboys were within reach of taking the lead from the Bears and Witten may have made a difference – if he was healthy.  I saw later coverage that showed Witten becoming angry with someone on the sidelines for not letting him back into the game.  While his desire to help is team is admirable, his own concern about his health was scarily non-existent.  I think those coaches made the right decision, even if the Cowboys lost.  Witten hadn’t had time to be properly evaluated medically during the game and there’s no telling what sort of hidden dangers may be lurking in his head – dangers that wouldn’t be so hidden if he received another big hit. 

I’ve seen games where a guy definitely suffers a concussion and goes back in to finish the game.  Some people view it as a sign that they weren’t really all that injured while others see it as a resolve to not let their teammates down.  And again, while I admire the dedication to helping the team earn a win, I think the organization, the coaches, the medical staff fumble when they allow the player to override the real medical concern about allowing a player to suffer multiple collisions on the field while having a concussion.  There is a team, that shall remain nameless, that allowed a player the week before to go back into the game when he couldn’t even make it off the field without stumbling around and falling down.  The player looked drunk.  Would the team have felt so good about sending a drunk guy into battle on the field?  More than likely not, but there was little concern about the player playing with a concussion.  I was actually horrified to see him go back into the game because every time the action got too close to that player, I would cringe – not wanting to see a repeat concussion or worse.  Maybe the player said he was fine, maybe the player actually thought he was fine but we all know that football players are competitive and showing weakness is usually not an option.  The decision shouldn’t be left up to the players.  Heck, it shouldn’t be left up to the coaches.  I know each team has their own way of assessing the situation and making the determination on whether a suspected concussion patient should be allowed back into the game (and the Cowboys made the right call, in my opinion).  The NFL has to be able to take that decision out of the hands of the guys who don’t want to miss a down and will do anything to not be taken out of the game.  The NFL has to be able to take that decision out of the hands of coaches who really think that the guy could be the difference-maker in the next possession.  The problem is a long-term one for the player and we all know that Americans are incapable of planning long-term anymore…

This is serious situation for the game and the better policy that should be put into place is the one that actually shows concern for the player long after their playing career is done…

But last week, it came to light that the victim in the Washington state attack fabricated the attack story.  While her injuries were real, how she obtained those awful facial burns was not.  The victim originally told police that a black woman with a ponytail approached her and after asking her if she wanted a drink, threw acid in her face.  At the time, I was horrified that anyone would do that to a complete stranger.  You can blind, burn, disfigure and even kill using acid.  It’s one of those crimes that made me sad for society if we now had to be cautious of each other even more so than we already are.  But something didn’t sit right with me about the story and so I didn’t blog about it right away when I first read it.  Was there really a link between the victim and the alleged attacker?  It turns out that I was right, but not the way I imagined.

Young women are placed under much stress, particularly those young women just out of school and looking to make their own way.  We have to deal with gender inequity in the workforce, conflicting stereotypes socially on exactly how we are supposed to behave, dress and appear.  Our appearances are what others use to judge us, not our intelligence, our warmth, our compassion.  We have to be slutty enough to attract a mate, but not so slutty that he couldn’t picture taking us home to meet mom.  We have to be the perfect employee, girlfriend, daughter…and at the age of the young woman in question, it’s a terrible time trying to figure out who you really want to be.  I have no doubt that moving away from family and friends to a new town when you’re so young is stressful.  I did it myself.  It’s hard to learn to reject those stresses that society places on you that aren’t healthy for your self-esteem, your personal worth.  Women struggle with it every day of their lives, whether they realize it or not.

The manner in which this young woman chose to deal with the stresses is what saddens and in some way, infuriates me.  Self-harm is nothing new as a coping mechanism, although acid is a particular method I have not heard before.  Lots of young girls cut themselves as a way to cope.  Eating disorders are another coping mechanism in which the person harms him- or more likely her-self.  So, while my stomach churns thinking of exactly how she threw acid into her own face, I know that self-harm is sometimes the only way a disaffected person can feel connected to their emotions, regardless of whether those emotions are good or bad.  Depressed people often report feeling numb.  Pain is sometimes the only way to break through that veil of numbness.  But the young woman then took a course of action that I cannot condone – lying to police and implicating someone else for the horrific attack. 

I guarantee there were plenty of black women with ponytails in the area where this occurred that looked at themselves, wondering if they might be stopped, questioned by police for something in which they had no part.  I get that there is a huge mistrust of the police forces in some neighborhoods, rightly or wrongly.  I’m not here to debate that.  But there might have been more than one person fearful of the knock on the door, being implicated by someone who might have had an agenda to get that person in trouble. 

And the underlying message of the alleged perpetrator really bothers me.  First of all, selecting the old standby, “A person of another race, particularly one marginalized in our society” is the culprit.  Didn’t Susan Smith, a white female, allege that a black male carjacked her and took her vehicle with her two young sons in the back before she tearfully admitted that she herself drove the car and her boys into a lake, killing the her own sons?  If you’re going to make up a perpetrator of a crime that you, yourself, committed, could you please make up a culprit that is your own race and gender?  Plus, the whole attack seemed designed to strike out against another female, which is not a good message.  Females have a hard enough time relating to one another because we’re so damn competitive.  Men and their sports have nothing on the female-female interactions.  Half the time, we’re trying to like one another and half the time we’re stabbing each other in the back.  As much as I depise the “Real Housewives” phenomenon, part of the entertainment value is seeing women being catty to their supposed friends.

I sincerely hope the young lady at the center of this story gets the psychological help she needs to overcome whatever demons might have caused her to perform such a horrible act of self-mutilation.  And I hope that she can banish the inner demons she has in her heart and learn to respect not only all the other people around her, but her own self as well…

But, there was another story that was absolutely so incredible that I feel compelled to write about it.  In Wisconsin, there is a prosecutor who decided to send suggestive texts to a plaintiff in an abuse case.  The young woman had a boyfriend that attempted to strangle her and in the midst of the first meeting with the young lady to discuss the case, the 50 year-old prosecuting attorney decided that sending suggestive texts to this woman while prosecuting her ex was a morally acceptable course of action.  He sent this 26 year-old woman 30 texts over the course of a few days, trying to start an affair with her.  One of creepy texts, “Are you the kind of girl that likes secret contact with an older married elected DA … the riskier the better” shows that this elected official’s moral compass isn’t exactly pointing towards to pure driven snow. 

The problem with this case is that it is clearly an example of abuse of power.  This poor young woman had to deal with an abusive ex-boyfriend only to be target of a sleezemonger of a prosecuting attorney.  The woman claims, rightly, that she felt there was pressure from the attorney to consent to the relationship or the case against her abuser may not be prosecuted.  This is a clear example of unethical behavior by an elected official and bordering on sexual harassment.  If they worked in the same office, he should have been canned.  And yet, the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation found no wrong-doing.  I find it insulting for the people of Wisconsin that they have an oversight committee in their state that apparently can’t find their ass with both hands. 

Instead of being contrite about the whole mess, this attorney went on the defensive, claiming he did nothing wrong.  Maybe in his eyes he did nothing wrong but after reading the story, I don’t think this guy can actually tell the difference between right and wrong.  Yet again, another example of a professional who, in the proximity of a pretty young girl, apparently loses all of his common sense and behaves completely unprofessionally.  What is it with some males?  Does all the blood rush from their heads to their other heads, rendering them complete idiots?  This guy is a prime example of an elected official who should remind himself that he is to serve the public interest, not the interest generated in his groin.  I sincerely hope the voters of Wisconsin are appalled enough by his behavior to think twice at the polls.  Now that this idiot’s wife divorced him, I’m positive that he would find nothing wrong in prosecutor intimidation of domestic abuse victims as a form of wooing.  Who knows, it could be your wife, daughter, niece or granddaughter this guy targets next.  After all, as he stated, “I’m serious! I’m the atty. I have the $350,000 house. I have the 6-figure career. You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize!”, he certainly seems to think he’s the cat’s meow and all the women of Wisconsin are idiots for not recognizing his sterling qualities…

This post isn’t to rail about the fact that men are primarily visual animals and respond to a pretty female.  It’s biology.  I get that and I understand that.  However, when you are a professional, you are expected to act like a professional while performing your job.  And it’s obvious that some members of the NFL haven’t gotten the message that getting paid an insane amount of money to play a game for roughly half a year means that while you are on the clock, so to speak, you need to act like a professional.  Rex Ryan, who really should have been a bit more concerned with getting his team ready for the season instead of chest-thumping, swearing and behaving like the leader of a frat house on HBO, didn’t seem too concerned with the allegations that members of his and staff couldn’t behave themselves in proximity of a pretty reporter.  He should have come down just as hard on his guys about that as he should have about their abysmal passing game.  Instead, he said that they would “look into it”.  The president of the Jets made more of an effort to make sure that it was addressed than the coach, a failure on the part of the organization.  Players take their cues from the coach and the coach basically said it wasn’t a big deal.  That’s an epic fail at addressing a lack of professionalism on the part of your employees.  I’ll even go so far as to say that apparently the players and staff of the team couldn’t behave professionally and therefore, the way the Jets played Monday night was a direct reflection on the lack of professionalism by the coach and the staff.  The fact that the Ravens offense looked as pathetic as the Jets was the only reason the score was so close.  If you’re playing the Ravens on Monday Night Football, Coach Ryan, I suggest that your team concentrate more on route running and blocking drills than trying to sneak peeks at a girl on the sidelines…

And then, to cap the idiot parade this week, Clinton Portis opened his mouth and basically said that female reporters in the locker room are basically checking out the players’ packages and getting turned on by some of the players.  I’ve never seen Portis’ package (and frankly, don’t really want to) but I’ve got news for him and any other Neanderthal out there.  Most women don’t get turned on by looking at your manhood.  Quite honestly, the male penis taken just as a visual object is really quite amusing more than an erotic sight.  Women are a bit more complex in the whole arousal sphere that looking a collection of penises (or packages as Portis likes to say) would probably make us less turned on than if we saw a parade of well-muscled dudes with a towel wrapped around their waists.  We females need some context for the sight of a penis to make us weak in the knees.  Looking at a penis/scrotum package cold (much less 53 of them in various lengths, sizes, circumsions, and degree of manscaping ability) would probably make us giggle a little or if the man is truly well-endowed, make us feel sorry for his girlfriend.

I’m sure if Portis was a male reporter in a female locker room looking a collection of breasts and other girlie bits would probably find himself unable to act professionally and is projecting his own idiotic thought process onto the collective female sport reporter population.  I guarantee that 99% of the female sports reporters can handle themselves professionally in any situation because they have had to work long and hard (no pun for you Portis) at being taken seriously in the industry.  I highly doubt that any female sports reporter that has paid their dues to finally get to cover the NFL is going to lose their credibility by taking a package window-shopping spree in a locker room.   

The NFL should expect the same level of professionalism from their players (employees actually) that any other employer would expect out of their employees, particularly when they are “on the clock”.  That means: on the field for practices, games, warm-ups and the like, as well as in the locker room, on the air during promotional activites (and being on a radio talk show is a promotional activity Portis since I’m sure you didn’t take a marketing class), and conducting yourself in public.  You want to be a chauvanist, do it at home and make sure no one is recording you or taking your photo.  But when you are being paid millions of dollars in the employ of a professional sports team, remember that your actions and words are being monitored by legions of fans as well as reflecting upon your employer as a whole.  The NFL, after coming so far to clean up its image, has just gotten another black eye from players and coaches that don’t know how to behave as professionals.

Now, I understand that companies should not be engaging in deceptive marketing, labeling and sales practices.  I get that.  But this whole situation smacks of a bit of self-service.  First of all, the number of cases filed in the United States since this enterprising attorney filed his case rose exponentially.  It seems that a great number of patent attorneys have jumped on the money train for this and are filing claims left and right against major corporations.  When business is otherwise slow, I suppose this is a way to drum up some business and keep your skills sharp if you’re a patent attorney.  And of course, since the government is a beneficiary of a ruling in the favor of the plaintiff, it looks like it’s an unexpected windfall for the government as well.  Seems a bit odd that the government can be a beneficiary of a lawsuit that a branch of the same government is ruling upon.  What, is this a new corporate tax scheme that doesn’t need to go through Congress?  (Please note, I’m not personally blaming Obama for this, although I have a feeling that there are those out there that will blame him for this along with every other thing wrong in the world…)

The upshot of all this activity is that companies are now scrambling to check the status of their patents, which quite honestly, those records should be kept up to date anyway.  (In my company, funny enough, the legal department won’t keep those records.  Why do we pay them the ungodly amount we do?)  Unfortunately, all the legal actions have done nothing to actually protect the consumer, regardless of the moral ground that these patent attorneys claim.  I’m sorry but me buying a tube of mascara with an expired patent number on the tube does exactly what to me?  I probably would have to search to even find the damn thing and it’s not like I make a habit to check the patent numbers before purchasing a product, especially a product that I don’t care about the patent as much as I care about the quality.  (I’m sure Toyota could have patents all over their cars right now and I would not be pursuaded to buy one just because it sports a shiny patent.  I like my cars to stop when I press on the brakes…)

Could someone claim that because a product has a patent number on it, that competition could be diminished…possibly but I doubt it.  Knowing that a company holds a patented technology or process usually makes their competition work even harder to overcome the differentiating factor.  If you know that your competitor’s patent had expired, you could copy the patented process or technology – but as a consumer, I would hate that because then both products are essentially the same and there is no “market force” driving innovation.  And honestly, gunning for American corporations who display an expired patent is apparently a much easier win in terms of getting some cash than it is to try the companies (particularly the Chinese) who flaunt the patent protections and produce knock-off goods. 

So companies are now spending lots of time and internal effort hunting down mentions of their patents in literature, product manuals and in the production process in an effort to avoid litigation – instead of spending it on innovating their production processes to reduce waste and increase efficiency, creating new products that may entice consumers to spend a little bit more, develop cleaner forms of energy and all the other things that we desperately need as a society.  Naturally, many are relying on their legal counsel as well to keep them out of trouble.  Awfully nice of the patent attorneys to ensure their breathren get some extra work on the corporate legal side too.  And in the name of what?  The only beneficiaries I see of this whole situation are the attorneys’ bank accounts and governmental coffers…