The Anti-Violence Lie

Anti-bully fever is in the air lately.

The Toronto Star has the latest:

Councillor Doug Ford’s office has suggested Toronto schools look into a community service program backed by the violent mixed martial arts league, Ultimate Fighting Championship.

In an email obtained by the Star, Ford’s constituency assistant, Anna Vescio, asked a Toronto District School Board trustee to circulate a brochure touting an initiative called UFC Community Works.

According to the brochure, the program promotes “the development of discipline, respect, teamwork, honesty, time management and physical fitness” through mixed martial arts training and meetings with UFC fighters.

UFC has become notorious for its brutal, bloody, no-holds barred fighting. Mixed martial arts events were banned in Ontario until this year.

The spin later on in the piece is that schools are all about anti-violence, and mixed martial arts is a bad thing for kids to emulate. For Ford's part, he later said that he doesn't want fighting taught in schools. He wants to use the lecture services of the Community Works program to talk to kids.

As the kids might say: "Whatevs."

Ford isn't going to win on this one, now that it's out of the bag. People will see "UFC" written beside "schoolchildren" in the headlines, and that will be the end of the discussion.

I don't enjoy watching UFC fights, but I don't like hypocrisy, either. The most interesting line in the Toronto Star's story is this: "Mixed martial arts events were banned in Ontario until this year."

Yes, they were. And now they're not. Now, the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto can make hay off people beating the living crap out of each other. From licensing requirements, to taxes on overpriced cups of beer, the message from the province is simple: fighting is business, and business is good. To keep the business alive, we need people to smash each other's faces in. How about your children, Mrs. Smith?

It is only logical to conclude - as we do with hockey and football - that mixed martial arts are something that the province's children should admire. The banal sports radio hosts that talk endlessly about concussions in hockey would be the first ones to say that youth hockey is a great idea. Football damages more knees, ribs, and brains every year than mixed martial arts could ever hope to achieve, but we'll throw Johnny on the field the second a coach says, "He's got a nice arm."

The people that earnestly say that we shouldn't lie to children are likely the same people who lie when they teach kids that our society won't condone violence. The kids should think you're nuts. Violence is bad? We just made it legal to step into a ring, kick a man in the head, knock him to the ground, drop a knee into his gut, and then choke him until a) he begs for mercy, or b) the ref stops the choke hold before it kills him.

At Rogers Centre in Toronto on April 30, 2011, a total of 55,724 people paid big money to see just that. It was a record for a UFC event. And we're going to pretend that the province of Ontario has a philosophy of "anti-violence?"

Don't blame the fighter for the bloody mess you find on the floor of the octagon. He gets paid a decent buck to put that blood there, and he's got the province's blessing to do it. It shouldn't surprise you in the least if you find your son - or daughter - in there a few years down the road.

(Photo: Rogers Centre UFC April, 2011. Sportsnet.ca.)