Opinion: Wanton act of violence a waste of time

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Even as we recover from our collective disappointment that the big game didn’t provide us with adequate thrills, one is brought to contemplate the modern ethos surrounding the grand combat that is contemporary football. As we sit and listen to commentators compare these young athletes’ prowess to all manner of ancient warriors, the hyperbole is both amusing and concerning.

Just this week a purveyor of such things announced the looming exhibition boxing match of a pair of celebrities – or at least notorious humans. The promoter is bringing together George Zimmerman, the low-rent, armed neighborhood watch protagonist who shot an unarmed 15-year-old boy, and Earl Simmons, the multi-platinum-selling, bankrupt deadbeat dad of 12 (more paternity claims are being litigated), felon and movie star who presently calls himself DMX. Although there isn’t enough room in this column, perhaps in the entire newspaper, to fully come to grips with these men’s guilt or innocence against the various social expectations they have confronted, one can certainly imagine the PT Barnum-like spectacle this display will generate.

Mr. Simmons summarily expressed his bravado by proclaiming in an expletive-laced tirade that he would beat Mr. Zimmerman to near death and complete his humiliation by evacuating himself on the body. Mr. Zimmerman, in his own display of modern manhood, has been seeking a boxing match like this one for some time and has been shopping for an opponent most likely to generate attention, and thus cash for himself.

Please forgive the use of rather coarse language in describing the interaction between these two humans; however, its expression printed here barely exposes the vitriol of what has actually been said. Is this an important expression of rage in our society, or simply unfettered and devolved pandering?


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