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.)

The Bully Ball Busted

CBS Boston: "Lynch described a phone call she received from the school explaining that the case will be treated like sexual harassment, due to what it considers inappropriate touching.

“‘Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment,’” Lynch said the school told her.

Only in the bizarro world of our current planet Earth could kicking someone in the balls be called "sexual harassment."

In this case, Ms. Lynch says a boy was choking her 7-year-old son and wanted to steal his gloves. Her son responded exactly as he should have: by squaring the guy. The school reacted to that by saying there would be an investigation for sexual harassment because it involved "inappropriate touching."

Cool. Now I understand: when I inappropriately bumped into that guy on the subway, I wasn't trying to get off the subway, I was committing sexual harassment.

I wonder where we get these educators today? At Penn State, a guy literally can't get arrested for raping kids in the shower. In Boston, a kid's up on a sex rap for defending himself. In Vancouver, people are singing the blues and saying "down with bullies" because yet another poor teen killed themselves after being bullied into depression.

Note to schools: your anti-bully campaigns won't do nearly as much good as a lesson from the 7-year-old who aimed for the goal posts with his groin punt. Don't punish him. Let him teach the anti-bullying class.

Who would you trust these days: 7-year-olds who follow their instincts of self preservation, or school administrations that can't protect kids and in fact give the kid hell for protecting himself?