Asay likes to
call me “Professor” whenever we bump into one another. I’m left both honored and teased. With Clare, it’s just teasing when I refer to
her as “Weasel.” Don’t ask me why, it
just stuck one day. She’s never
complained. Is anyone being bullied
here?
I would hope
not, but at some point what we do say can, and will, hurt. The NFL again leads by example with its
release of a report on the situation with Dolphins’ offensive lineman Jonathan
Martin. The taunting from three
teammates got so bad he considered suicide.
For what it’s worth, I have never witnessed softball players coming
close to such behavior. Football is in
so many ways a universe unto itself.
I’m not so sure
about female fans, though. Girls will
be like boys in the quest to offer that perfect environment for the home team—we’re
great, you [insert expletive here]! To
me, yelling “A-Roid!” at Alex Rodriguez doesn’t constitute bullying. But after that it becomes a slippery slope
that involves parentage, race, talent, gender and sexual identity. The difference between taunting and bullying
then becomes something like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition
of pornography: “’I know it when I see
it.”
What happened to
Jackie Robinson is what we would now term bullying. My father yelling at Ozzie Guillen to “Tuck
your shirt in!” was Ed Bukowski being Ed Bukowski, three rows from the on-deck
circle. And if I’m asked to stop calling
a certain person “weasel,” I will.
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