New Civility
[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Telemarketing Crybabies ] [ Death Penalty ] [ Flower Children and the Hand-Me-Down World ] [ When Restaurants Stop Serving Food ] [ Stock Market ] [ Soccer ] [ Is "Picnic" a racist word? ] [ Term Limits in Politics ] [ Pain Killer Commercials ] [ School Discipline - Thou Shalt Not Defend Thyself ] [ Contests ] [ Being Important with a Cell Phone ] [ My Tribute to Great Drivers ] [ About "To Kill A Mockingbird" ] [ New Civility ]

On May 11, 2002, there was a story in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel about a soccer referee who was attacked after a game.  It seems that some people didn't like the calls he was making, so they attacked him after the game to teach him a lesson.  The story reports:

On his way to his car, two members of the Eastwind team, Ricardo Facey and Hugh Horne, jumped him, according to police reports. He deflected a kick from Horne, but then Facey -- still wearing his cleats -- leaped from a fence and caught Rutty in the throat with a karate kick, according to the police report.

The father of one of the attackers gave his evaluation of the situation:

Speaking on behalf of his son, Facey's father, Robert, said Rutty called the game poorly and the players "just snapped." His team has young players -- Horne is 21 and Ricardo Facey is 23 -- and doesn't always receive the officials' respect, he said.

"I'm not condoning what the boys did, but he's just a bad referee," said Facey, an Eastwind coach who had been disciplined by Rutty during the game for foul language.

"If I see something is wrong, I say it, and that doesn't always make me popular," he said. "The officiating was so blatant against us."

Facey acknowledged that players were swearing at Rutty.

"Every [Eastwind player and fan] that was there was swearing at him," Facey said.

It's nice to see that this father (the father of a 23-year-old man) was "not condoning" what the "boys" did.  But I think it's instructive to notice that he spent more time condemning "bad refereeing" than he spent condemning a vicious, cowardly, criminal attack by two fully grown men.

People like this are crybabies and bullies.  And they are the reason children have so little respect lately.  How can we expect children to show any morals or respect when we've got adults behaving like this and trying to make silly, juvenile excuses?

Please feel free to send me comments about anything you see here
My E-Mail Address: dan_pressnell@yahoo.com