underdogishere

Yesterday I went to the gym during lunch, and the televisions were showing a paintball tournament. There was a hard, flat field, and a bunch of big brightly colored cushions that I guess were supposed to be cover. Two teams of men would rush onto the field from opposite sides and blaze away with paintball guns. This was actually being televised on a national sports channel.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it disrespectful -- maybe even a little obscene -- that grown men are playing pretend-combat on national TV while men and women are fighting in real combat in Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Chechnya? In Sudan? Does anyone else see paintball battles on national TV as glorifying the outcome of combat while pretending there is no suffering, no fear, no loss? Am I making too much of this? Or does anyone agree with me that we should draft these guys and send them overseas to see what it really is that they're playing at. They could do some honest good fighting the Janjaweed in Darfur. And they could still be on television. It would just be CNN, instead of ESPN.

Labels: Dubya, Musing, Seen