Mar. 11, 2004 - 16:49 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Gladiators ?

I guess in these modern times "good sportmanship" is pretty well a thing of the past.

Occasionally I notice, when tuning through TV, those wrestling farces wherein people are braining each other with folding chairs and the whole schmear.

I was an avid wrestling fan when we first got TV in 1951. Didn't miss a program if I could keep from it. As I watched it gradually dawned on me that if what it appeared to happen, did actually happen they would be carting the wrestlers away in ambulances. My interest waned. Australian Tag Team wrestling killed the whole thing for me.

I have watched Soccer on TV, which is a physical, hard played kicking game, but never have I seen anything as disgraceful as the fighting at pro Hockey games.

Granted, fans of various sports engage in violent actions and usually pay some kind of price for doing so. I guess European fans are noted for this. But, police handle violence by fans, or are supposed to.

The excuse of, "That's the way hockey always has been," isn't any better than, "That's the way war always has been." Seems to me that the excuse is bogus, the main aim I can see is that the spectators "demand it." More money in the till, possibly for the establishment ?

But violence at sports events are a bunch worse I think. Our young people learn violence and cheating from watching sporting events with Dad or watching games on TV. Though, even on TV the videocams turn away from violent occurrences, usually.

Are we at this late date going back to when we just came down out of the trees, built ovals for events, I wonder did it start with Gladiators ? . . . . . . . . . . . .

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