Who are the adults in this mess?

If Congressman Joe Wilson's ill-tempered and badly-timed rant last night did nothing else, it reinforced the idea that this country is headed over a cliff, driven by partisans by both sides of the aisle.

Wilson, who scrambled to apologize and save face, has drawn predictable scorn and outrage from Democrats and Republicans. But really now, people: How was his conduct last night any different than what we hear on a daily basis around this country?

From talk shows to cable news programs to town hall meetings, the concepts of civility, respect and tolerance have gone right out the window. No sooner had Wilson tried to extract his foot from his mouth than Congressman Barney Frank was going from show to show insulting the intelligence of Republicans. And on and on it goes.

The result? Our system of government is dragged through the mud, and no one seems capable or willing to turn off the garden hose and to end the supply of water that causes the mud in the first place.

We've become far more interested in taking score and pointing fingers than getting things done.

At this point, it really doesn't much matter who started the food fight that marks what passes for political discourse in the U.S. The questioning of Reagan's understanding of government became the attacks on Clinton's character, which gave way to hits on George W. Bush's intelligence, which bring us to where we are today, with a significant number of Americans openly challenging the authority of Obama to lead.

And the way things stand, whomever follows Obama, whether it's in 2013 or 2017, will take control of the government with a substantial bloc of Americans mocking his or her legitimacy as a leader.

My fear is that it will take the occurrence of something cataclysmic (and you can figure out what that is) before people on both sides realize they've gone too far.

The question is what person(s) command enough respect from liberals and conservatives to lead the nation through a dialogue where all of our significant differences are laid out on the table and hashed out, so that at the end, we can agree to disagree without going at each other's throats.

We desperately need some adults in the room before the kids throw so much food that the mess can't be cleaned up.

Usually, the drugs are better when you suffer a blackout

Here's the script for this week's "Sports at Large," which, as always, airs live each Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore. If you live outside the state of Maryland, you can catch the streaming broadcast of the show at WYPR.org.

By this time next week, the first week of the NFL season will be nearly complete.

By then, you'll probably have had your fill of those warm and fuzzy public service spots in which football players wander through the community, roughhousing with kids, all to remind us how much the NFL family gives to your family.

That family portrait gets marred when you peek inside the cameras to see what's really on the negative.

As the Sports Business Daily reported last week, as many as 12 of the 32 NFL teams are facing the prospect that some of their home games this season will not be televised.

That's because those teams may not be able to sell those games out in time to lift the league's television blackout.

Jim Steeg, the chief operating officer of the San Diego Chargers told USA Today that blackouts are likely there this season. Miami, Oakland and St. Louis may also see blackouts this year, while Cleveland and Kansas City have yet to sellout all their games for the coming season.

The issue is most acute in Detroit and Jacksonville, where a combination of the deep recession and bad play on the field may keep the fans away from the stadiums in droves.

The Lions, who lost all 16 games last year, may need divine intervention to beat last year's mark of five blackouts, while in Jacksonville, all eight Jaguars home games might be kept off local television.

Now, here's where that generosity of the NFL spirit should kick in. The league has for more than 30 years had a hard and fast rule that unless a game is sold out 72 hours before kickoff, it will not be shown on local television.

With thousands of fans not currently having the means to pay for pricey football seats, the NFL could relax the blackout rule in a variety of ways.

They could cut the deadline for sellout down to 48 or 24 hours. They could cut the percentage of tickets sold needed to waive the blackout to 75 or 80 percent, rather than a full 100.

Better yet, the league should have scrapped the entire blackout policy years ago. The NFL is the only sports organization, college or professional, that puts this kind of stipulation on when and how its fans can see games.

Imagine the goodwill the league would engender if Commissioner Roger Goodell said the blackout policy would go away for a year, if not for good?

Instead, a league spokesman told the Sports Business Daily that there is no consideration being given to changing blackout policy, that keeping the blackout is quote important to supporting the ability of the clubs to sell tickets and keeping our games attractive as television programming with large crowds unquote.

And that, my friends, is the real NFL family portrait. It may look like the Waltons are posing for the shot, but when the picture's developed, you find you're really looking at the Corleones.

Vick and his handlers

What follows is the script to this week's Sports at Large, , which airs on WYPR (88.1 FM) in Baltimore each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and again each Tuesday during Maryland Morning at 9 a.m. The show can also be heard live through streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

Michael Vick's return to the National Football League essentially ensures that his will be the dominant storyline of the upcoming professional football season.

But for as much attention as Vick will draw, there are four men who will be under the microscope as much as Vick, for his conduct and success will be tied to them.

Two of them, Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and his coach, Andy Reid, are directly affected by what Vick does this year.

It was Reid who made the call to pursue Vick, then convinced Lurie to offer a one year contract, with an option year, to a player who has been out of football for two years.

Even with the extended period away, the decision to sign Vick makes enormous sense, from a football standpoint. He is only 29 years old, and is blessed with tremendous speed and a powerful throwing arm.

Of course, there was so much more to the choice to bring in Vick beyond his 40-yard dash time and his ability to throw a 70-yard pass.

Vick's crimes against dogs were heinous and reprehensible. At each of the Eagles' 16 games, there will be a heavy presence of protestors, not to mention fans, asking how such a depraved individual could ever be allowed back on the field.

With all due respect to them and to those who love and cherish pets, the Eagles did the right thing.

Michael Vick has met all the requirements of the criminal justice system, and has pledged to speak out against the horrors of dog fighting.

His celebrity and his story could make him an amazing living example against animal cruelty and he ought to get that chance.

That's where Roger Goodell and Tony Dungy come in.

Goodell, the NFL commissioner, signed off on Vick's return. He is entirely correct to ensure that Vick understands that playing football is a privilege not a right.

To that end, Goodell, who has placed a premium on good citizenship among the league's players, put a hold on Vick's comeback, giving him as much as six weeks of the regular season to prove that he gets it.

The commissioner smartly also enlisted the assistance of Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts, to help Vick repair his character

There are no perfect people, and the NFL is increasingly becoming a home for miscreant behavior.

Indeed, on the day Vick signed with the Eagles, Goodell imposed a one-year suspension on Donte Stallworth, a Cleveland Browns receiver who pled guilty to a March DUI in which the car he was driving struck and killed a Miami man.

But Dungy's track record of mentoring and molding players is long and impressive. If anyone can show Michael Vick the straight and narrow, it's Tony Dungy.

To be sure, touchdowns and interceptions will tell one part of Michael Vick's redemption story.

But if you never hear the names of Andy Reid, Jeffrey Lurie, Roger Goodell and Tony Dungy again in the context of Michael Vick, you'll know the quarterback has made it all the way back.

One more thing: the league wasted no time authorizing the sale of Michael Vick jerseys in Eagle green.

Both Vick and the NFL should donate a portion of the profits of his jersey sales to a Philadelphia area animal rights concern. It may be one of the few good things Michael Vick has done in a long time.

Should Art get the call to the Hall?

Here's the script from this week's Sports at Large, which airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR (88.1 FM) and again the next morning during the 9 a.m. hour. If you don't live in the Baltimore area, you can hear the show live on streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

You get the feeling that Rod Woodson was the kind of kid who would go around stirring up a nest of hornets, then would stand and dare the insects to sting him.

In his Hall of Fame enshrinement speech Saturday, Woodson, who anchored the defensive backfield at safety in the Ravens Super Bowl season, told the crowd that former owner Art Modell belonged with him in Canton.

That would be Canton, as in Ohio. That would be Canton, as in an hour south of Cleveland. And that would be Cleveland, the city where Modell once owned the Browns, before he moved them to Baltimore.

So, Woodson stood in front of a crowd of Ohio football fans and told them that the guy who ripped their hearts out of their chests deserved to be honored among the greatest figures in the history of the sport.

And when the predictable boos rained down on him, Woodson stood there and told the crowd they were wrong, that despite what their feelings told them, Art Modell was a football legend, and should be eternally recognized as such.

In a world of complexities, of nuance, of shades of gray, we come to sports for the simplicity they offer. The guys in our uniforms are heroes. The guys in the other uniforms are the villains.

The trouble comes when the roles change, when the saints become sinners.

That day, for football fans in Northeast Ohio, came in November, 1995, when Art Modell decided to pick up his team and move them east.

From that point forward, Modell became the Cleveland version of Cain, a man who couldn't go home because of one misdeed.

Of course, Modell didn't kill anyone. And unlike another son of Ohio, Pete Rose, Modell didn't commit an unpardonable sin against his sport. All Art Modell did was move his team.

Actually, Art Modell's record in the NFL is a remarkable one.

It was Modell nearly 50 years ago who approached his friend Wellington Mara, the owner of the New York Giants, and sold him on the idea of sharing television revenue among the league owners.

Without that, there would be no way that cities like Green Bay or New Orleans or Baltimore would be able to compete with New York and Chicago or New England for players. The rich in football would get richer the same way they do in baseball.

And without Modell, the longtime chairman of the NFL's television committee, there might not have been Monday Night Football, as he convinced ABC and advertisers to take a chance on a new concept.

But here's where that shading comes in. The Browns were highly successful when Modell moved them.

And for long suffering Baltimore fans who see Modell as a savior, remember he voted against granted Charm City an expansion team, then struck a quiet agreement on a private plane with former Governor Glendening for the same stadium deal he voted against.

On balance, Rod Woodson is right; Art Modell should be enshrined in Canton.

Putting him there, however, would stir up a mighty big hornet's nest, and the voters may wait until the ire of the hornets of Cleveland has died down, and Art Modell has left this mortal coil before they do what's right.

 

Erin’s plight

Here's the script for this week's "Sports at Large," which airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and again on Tuesday mornings during "Maryland Morning" at 9 a.m. on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore. You can hear the station through streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

There are many unknowns left in the matter in which a reporter for ESPN named Erin Andrews was apparently filmed surreptitiously while she was in a hotel room, up to and including who did it.

What we do know is the perpetrator is subhuman and deserves to be punished to the limit that the law will allow for robbing Andrews of her privacy and taking away her sense of security.

But we would do a terrible disservice to Erin Andrews and every woman who makes a living in sports, in front or behind a camera, if we were to casually move on to the next topic when the person or persons who filmed Andrews is caught and put on trial.

For those who don't know her, Andrews is a 31-year-old woman who serves as a sideline reporter during ESPN and ABC telecasts.

Her contributions to a telecast typically consist of asking inane questions to a coach trying to rush off the field or the court at halftime of a game or tossing in trivial tidbits about one of the participants during a lull in the telecast.

That, in and of itself, doesn't make Andrews unusual among sideline reporters. Generally speaking, it's a superfluous position, no matter who does it, male or female.

The camera loves Erin Andrews, and many people, OK, men, love her for reasons that have little to do with her knowledge of a cover-two defense.

Chat rooms and blogs and Twitter postings serve as testament that sports fans, the overwhelming majority of them male, find Andrews irresistible.

And it's not just fans. There's a YouTube clip of the Tennessee men's basketball coach enthusiastically grabbing Andrews during an interview. And then there's former Orioles pitcher Rick Sutcliffe who practically leered at Andrews on air during an ESPN baseball telecast last year.

The only surprise for me in this story is that it didn't happen sooner. What I'm about to say will not come as news, but the American culture objectifies women.

Sports magnifies that objectification. Think not? Then ask yourself why former tennis player Anna Kournikova, who never came close to winning a major tournament, yet dominated endorsements and magazine covers.

ESPN has barred New York Post reporters from appearing on the channel because the newspaper ran still images from the video of Andrews that appeared online.

It's laudable that ESPN executives want to protect Andrews. Too bad they didn't take that approach a few years ago, when some of them bounced 50-something Lesley Visser from the Monday Night Football sidelines for a younger woman.

And what were they thinking this year, when they allowed an ESPN The Magazine writer to describe the size of basketball player Candace Parker's breasts in a story?

It's too late to give Erin Andrews her sense of security back. But that doesn't mean that we can't try to create a better climate for all the Erin Andrews to come.

A pointless gesture

I am a man and I am a big fan of women's basketball.

There, I said it and I'm not going to waste space explaining my interest to knuckle-dragging troglodytes who think that barefoot and pregnant is as much as women should aspire to.

That said, I don't understand why the WNBA continues to try to throw itself at the feet of people who couldn't care less about its product.

I'm speaking specifically about the "dunk" that Chicago center Sylvia Fowles threw down at the end of the league's All-Star Game Saturday. The word dunk appears in quotes for two reasons. One, the other nine players on the floor cleared out to allow the 6-foot-6 Fowles to flush it through. Second, Fowles missed the first attempt with a running start, before hitting the second.

Simply put, the dunk is not a part of the women's game, and hasn't been since West Virginia's Georgeann Wells because the first collegian to do it more than 25 years ago. The primary reason is there aren't many women who can do it, but I'd like to believe that even if, say, one woman per roster in the pro or major college game could, they would use it sparingly because there are other more fundamental ways to score. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate a nasty tomahawk as much as the next person. But, if I go to an NBA or men's college game and I don't see a dunk, I don't feel cheated.

To the larger point, Fowles' dunk just feels like one more attempt to make those aforementioned troglodytes pay attention. And they won't. As a matter of fact, I can practically guarantee that the ones who host sports radio talk shows and the ones who listen will bust a gut laughing at Fowles and the rest of the league as early as drive time tomorrow if they aren't doing it already. And if the people who run the league could simply live with the fact that there is a part of the American sports fan populace who will never accept the legitimacy of women athletes and nurture those who do, things would be fine.

Instead, the WNBA, in large measure, continues to ignore the professional women, the African-Americans, the families with young children, the older fans and yes, the lesbians, who embrace it, in search of the Holy Grail, the young men who drool over Erin Andrews, who tune into SportsCenter for bombs, home runs and dunks, and think boxing is too subtle.

At some point, hopefully before it folds, the WNBA's leaders are going to have come to grips with the notion that their product is better than a lot of the people they're selling their souls to bring in.

DT+DUI = WNBA Trouble

What follows is the script that aired on "Sports at Large," on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore. The program airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. during "All Things Considered," and again during "Maryland Morning" Tuesday at 9 a.m. You can listen to the program through streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

Over the past 30 years or so, since the advent of Title 9, women athletes have become more than just competitors to their young fans, boys and girls. They've become flat out heroes, to be idolized and emulated.

So, what happens when one of these idols stumbles and falls? To what degree does her image take a beating in the public square, and just as importantly, should she be permitted the same latitude as a male counterpart.

Three weeks ago, Diana Taurasi, a guard with the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA, scored 22 points in a 93-81 home win over the Seattle Storm. After the game, Taurasi and friends went out to celebrate.

Phoenix police said Taurasi's vehicle was driving 20 miles an hour over the 35-mile-per-hour limit, and that an officer saw the car drift out of a traffic lane.

When Taurasi was stopped at 2:30 a.m., she was driven to a mobile DUI van, where she gave a blood sample. Her blood-alcohol level was a point-17, more than twice the Arizona limit of point-08.

She has pleaded not guilty to the DUI and speeding charges, and Taurasi faces a minimum of 30 days in jail and a maximum of six months if she's convicted. She is to face a hearing on Wednesday.

Even to those who are indifferent or hostile to women's basketball, the name Diana Taurasi is a known commodity.

She led the University of Connecticut to three NCAA championships, and has been a key cog on two Olympic gold medal winning squads.

Men who hate women's basketball have been known to confer on Taurasi the status that she plays like a guy, based on her athleticism and brashness.

And by the way, men, that's no compliment.

Diana Taurasi was a driving force of the Mercury's league championship squad two years ago and currently leads the WNBA in scoring.

She's so good that a former competitor once named one of her adopted twins in her honor. The child is a boy and she named it Taurasi.

At any rate, the WNBA's All-Star Game takes place this Saturday in Connecticut, and Taurasi would normally be expected to be a part of the festivities back in the place where she became a star.

But should she be? Can a league that so depends on the goodwill of its fan base have one of its leading stars on display under these circumstances?

Save for a one-game suspension for mouthing off to officials, Diana Taurasi has never been in trouble before. Under normal circumstances, that might get earn her a pass.

But Diana Taurasi could have killed one of the little girls who idolize her with her thoughtlessness, and she deserves some punishment.

The Mercury, with the WNBA's blessing, gave Taurasi a two game suspension. That's a decent first step, but Diana Taurasi should take the next one by sitting herself down and taking herself out of Saturday's contest.

After all, All-Stars and heroes, males and females, don't just exist on the playing field. Their best and most lasting work comes when the jersey is taken off. It's a lesson Diana Taurasi won't soon forget.

ADDENDUM: Since this script was written and recorded, Diana Taurasi was selected to the Western Conference All-Star squad yesterday.