A bunch of drunken meatheads with a losing record + a gaggle of Dixie escorts + some boats = cheap, cheap outrage...
Perhaps you've heard of the Vikings Sex Scandal? To
me, it mostly proves that Minnesota is hard up for scan-
dals. A week or so on, we’re still salivating about our half-
assed football team and their floating orgy. By now, the
sixteen people who weren’t aware that athletes often
cavort with strippers and behave like louts have had the
time to get over their shock, yet talk radio and blogs and
local newscasts haven’t given up flogging the issue. The
basement pundits and the smarmy know-it-alls are blue
in the face from pretending to gasp for so long. The gentle,
upstanding citizens of the northland have been told that
they are aghast, AGHAST at the transgressions of their
sporting men so often that most of them now are, even if
they weren’t before. These things take on a life of their
own and, through the magic of chatter, a sleazy party attend-
ed by a troop of semi-talented jocks and their imported
girlfriends takes on a whole new significance.
For instance, Katherine Kersten, the Star Tribune’s hack
conservative, takes the reaction to the episode as a heart-
ening signal that society at large is beginning to hate sex
as much as she seems to. Right-wingers can be entertain-
ing when they go apeshit drawing specious parallels be-
tween the events of the day and their own personal dislikes.
Few have a greater gift for this than Ms. Kersten, who can
segue from anecdote to statistic to stern moral pronounce-
ment with the kind of virtuosity only the finest think-tank
fellowships can produce.
However, I’m not so certain that people who are mad at
Vikings are, as she confidently asserts, unable to explain
why. She is apparently in communication with a less ar-
ticulate circle than I am. No one I’ve spoken to has any
trouble stating why they think the Vikings are a bunch of
overindulged, asshole swine. Largely it stems from the fact
that they had a couple boats jam-packed with professional
sex-workers and yet they still had to grope and hassle the
unlucky, college-aged servers. A good deal of malice also
comes their way for being heinously overpaid man-children
who strut around as though they rule the planet even though
they–put plainly–suck at their jobs. I guess I live in a liber-
tine bubble or something, because no one I know is upset
with the team because they fuck women they don’t intend
to marry or because they’re representative of some kind of
cultural decline or whatever.
me, it mostly proves that Minnesota is hard up for scan-
dals. A week or so on, we’re still salivating about our half-
assed football team and their floating orgy. By now, the
sixteen people who weren’t aware that athletes often
cavort with strippers and behave like louts have had the
time to get over their shock, yet talk radio and blogs and
local newscasts haven’t given up flogging the issue. The
basement pundits and the smarmy know-it-alls are blue
in the face from pretending to gasp for so long. The gentle,
upstanding citizens of the northland have been told that
they are aghast, AGHAST at the transgressions of their
sporting men so often that most of them now are, even if
they weren’t before. These things take on a life of their
own and, through the magic of chatter, a sleazy party attend-
ed by a troop of semi-talented jocks and their imported
girlfriends takes on a whole new significance.
For instance, Katherine Kersten, the Star Tribune’s hack
conservative, takes the reaction to the episode as a heart-
ening signal that society at large is beginning to hate sex
as much as she seems to. Right-wingers can be entertain-
ing when they go apeshit drawing specious parallels be-
tween the events of the day and their own personal dislikes.
Few have a greater gift for this than Ms. Kersten, who can
segue from anecdote to statistic to stern moral pronounce-
ment with the kind of virtuosity only the finest think-tank
fellowships can produce.
However, I’m not so certain that people who are mad at
Vikings are, as she confidently asserts, unable to explain
why. She is apparently in communication with a less ar-
ticulate circle than I am. No one I’ve spoken to has any
trouble stating why they think the Vikings are a bunch of
overindulged, asshole swine. Largely it stems from the fact
that they had a couple boats jam-packed with professional
sex-workers and yet they still had to grope and hassle the
unlucky, college-aged servers. A good deal of malice also
comes their way for being heinously overpaid man-children
who strut around as though they rule the planet even though
they–put plainly–suck at their jobs. I guess I live in a liber-
tine bubble or something, because no one I know is upset
with the team because they fuck women they don’t intend
to marry or because they’re representative of some kind of
cultural decline or whatever.
