What the Hell is Wrong With Some People?

You’ve got to wonder.

A person was ejected from a major league baseball recently for taunting a ballplayer about the death of his mother.

To be clear, a spectator at a professional sporting event thought it a good idea to mock an athlete because the athlete’s mother had been killed in an automobile accident.

The player broke down in tears.

It has subsequently been announced that the “fan” has been barred indefinitely from attending major league baseball games. The assailant (for surely this was an attack) has supposedly expressed remorse and admitted that his actions were inappropriate. Well, at least there’s that.

One wonders about the mind set of a person who decides that it’s okay to taunt someone — anyone, anywhere at anytime — over the death of a parent. In what world is that anything but reprehensible?

In my younger days I would yell from the stands at opposing players. I don’t do this anymore but have no regrets for these past actions. Most of what I yelled was in good humor and nothing was personal or at all related to any tragedy that the person had suffered. I can’t conceive of what this fan in Chicago did. Like sexual assault, it’s something beyond my conception. I am no angel and I don’t pretend to ever have been. But what some people do and say is utterly shocking.

When present Golden State Warrior head coach Steve Kerr was eighteen his father, Malcolm Kerr, was killed by members of the Islamic Jihad while serving as president of the American University of Beirut. Four years later while warming up before a game for his college basketball team, the University of Arizona, opposing fans from ASU taunted Kerr with chants such as “PLO" and "Where’s your father?” (To his credit Kerr went off in the first half scoring 20 points and connecting on six of six three-point shots.) But again, what is wrong with people?

Yelling horrible things at people at sports venue is not exclusive to the United States. It is an international phenomenon — or should I say, sickness. For example, in England there have been incidences of tragedy chanting which is, according to a BBC News article: “When fans sing deeply offensive songs that reference stadium disasters or fatal accidents involving players or supporters.Despite being widely condemned by everyone involved in the game, it has been part of football culture for decades.”

Tragedy chanting has been directed at Liverpool’s football club because of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989 in which 97 supporters were killed as terraces collapsed at the beginning a match. Manchester United fans have also heard such chants as a consequence of a 1958 Munich air crash in which eight players and three club staff died. Such chants are still not uncommon and are perpetrated by fans from the continent as well as England.

Again I struggle to conceive of a mind that would feel comfortable engaging in such chanting. We’ve got enough pain and hurt in our world (see: Trumpy, Donald) without adding to it a fellow human being’s misery by reminding them of the worst moments from their life. Imagine someone mockingly reminding you of a personal tragedy while you’re working, which of course professional athlete’s are doing during games.

I don’t quite know what to make of people. We are seeing so much callousness, cruelty and insensitivity in the world today, particularly in the U.S. We have one political party and it’s leader (again see: Trumpy, Donald) who are enacting policies and eliminating programs that serve those in need. There’s even an ethos within the MAGA movement to not care about other people’s problems. And this from Christians. Liberals have been, in the past, mocked as do-gooders and bleeding hearts by conservatives who evidently believe in doing bad and whose hearts don’t bleed because they’re made of stone. These are people who relish “liberal tears.” They’re not interested in doing what’s best for the greater good. They just want to feel like they’re winning and that their foes are vanquished and miserable. They take joy in the misery of others because their inner lives are so empty and miserable.

I here remind of you a quote that can be found on the side of this blog: "They have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule." 

We are living in time when the rich are getting very much richer and the poor very much poorer and many of those on the sidelines are celebrating. It is, they say, Democrats who are are out to destroy America. Meanwhile they decry those of us who are woke. Being woke, they contend is a major problem for people and institutions. Here is how Merriam-Webster defines woke: "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)." Sounds awful doesn’t it? Who'd want to be aware of social injustices, better to institutionalize them.

So maybe it’s not surprising that someone would show up at a sporting event and taunt a player because his mom had the misfortune of dying in a car accident. It really kind of fits in with the direction many in the country are heading in. Nor is it all together surprising that left-leaning political figures are being threatened, shot, arrested and harassed.

I close with this quote from Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters: “You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question ‘How could it possibly happen?’ is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is ‘Why doesn't it happen more often?’”

Fair point.