Bully

The world of sport is proving to be rich fodder these days.  The latest kerfuffle: some very big bullies.  The Miami Dolphins have a situation on their hands.  Last week Jonathan Martin, an offensive lineman (read really big guy), left the team facility after some sort of meltdown.  As it turns out, Martin was being bullied, harassed and otherwise tormented by one (or maybe more) of his teammates.  The reaction, as the apologists for the gladiatorial atmosphere of professional sport try to get the spin under control, has been rather interesting, to say the least.

Luckily, they have been able to find a scapegoat to carry the sins of the community out into the wilderness: Richie Incognito.  He is the perfect bad guy.  He looks like everyone's idea of a bully; he's a hulking, blonde guy with lots of tattoos and a permanent bad attitude.  He looks like Biff, "hello Mcfly," attempted date rapist, from Back to the Future.  He's got look of a bully from some after school special all grown up.  He's got a record of unsociable behavior going back to college, he was named "the dirtiest player in the league," he's demonstrated that he's a vulgar racist and probably a deplorable human being, and he's probably not that different from people you are bound to run across in any given sector of the "real world."

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, they're not always as obvious as Incognito (by happy accident that is a really funny statement).  Bullies are everywhere, I don't know why everyone is so shocked that one existed in the Miami Dolphins locker room.  Locker rooms breed bullies like fungus, and a big part of the phenomenon is that the world of sports, with it's martial qualities, encourages "leadership" by the strongest members of the team.  Challenges to the hierarchy take place all the time.  It's animal behavior that we learned all about from Wild America: climb the ladder, get power and keep it by violence.  Mike Ditka on ESPN this morning seemed mystified why someone on the team didn't take Incognito "outside."  In other words, why didn't physical violence step in and solve the verbal and emotional abuse that Incognito was apparently inflicting on Martin.

The answer is sinister and also rather obvious.  To quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, "You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall."  Incognito probably wasn't picking on Martin out of the blue.  There was probably something about him that just begged for the bully to push him down.  Maybe it's that he was a little passive, maybe it's because he was a Stanford grad, maybe it was racial, maybe it was a combination of lots of things.  I'm not blaming the victim here, what I'm getting at is that the reason why this didn't raise eyebrows and draw out some noble defender of humanity, is because it happens all the time, it's part of "how things work," in sports, in the military, in offices and yes, even in churches.  You establish your place in the society by proving where you belong in the hierarchy, and it rarely has to do with pure talent and ability.  The nail that sticks up gets pounded down in most cases.

It seems rather hypocritical, at this late hour, for the talking heads of the sports world, to act all shocked and appalled at what has apparently happened in the Dolphin's organization.  Players are standing in the bright lights saying things like: "I don't know if I call it hazing, it's more like a right of passage."  They are referring to common practices like making rookies buy food for the team, taping them to goal posts and generally demonstrating that they are the low men on the totem pole.  My question is, when the system accepts "a certain amount" of bullying, hazing and humiliation, why is it so shocking when members of the system get out of hand?

In elementary schools all across the nation, like the one where my kids go, they have assemblies that talk about bullying.  How to spot it, what to do about it, and how to keep it from happening in the first place.  None of the strategies take the Iron Mike Ditka approach of "taking him outside and, you know, taking a shot at him."  Violence perpetuates violence, and while "we" do need to stand up to bullies, "we" really means we, all of us, the system, the other players the coaches, the students, the teachers, the parents.

The presence of bullies is an unacceptable failure of the system.  I am really hoping that this example helps us learn something about that reality.  I hope the fact that a massive offensive lineman, a Stanford graduate and a man who achieved in sport at the highest level, can be driven to a breakdown by the actions of a bully, helps us as a culture realize that this has to stop.  Because the system has to fight back, not just one person.  Trust me, I know from experience, standing up to one bully won't solve the problem of bullying in general, you have to change the culture that accepts bullying as "the way it is."

That means no more turning a blind eye when someone is being harassed, even if that someone "seems like they deserve it."  That means no more using the system of violence and hierarchy to maintain order, even if it wins championships.  That means no more tolerance of bullies, because "oh that's just how they are."

Call me a skeptic, but I don't think we talking monkeys are quite evolved enough to pull it off.