Danehy: Esports are not sports, hospitals are not bread police and Hitler is not a good example for the homeless

The five dumbest things I read this past week:

• The University of Arizona now has a million-dollar venue called the Esports Arena. Yes, it’s dumb that anybody would spend a million dollars on a place to play video games. It’s even dumber to use the word “Arena” to describe what is basically an extended version of the basement that Kevin Smith occupied (calling it his “Command Center”) in the Die Hard movie featuring Timothy Olyphant as an angry computer geek.

But, by far, the dumbest part—the Dumb de Resistance—is the use of the term “Esports.” Video games are not sports; they’re games. Sports require you to get your fat butt off the couch and go outside or into the gym and do something physical. Throw a ball, catch a ball, kick a ball. Run or jump or lift something.

Now, just because they’re games doesn’t mean that they have no value. They can help people wind down after a tough day. They can help socially fragile people connect with others like themselves without having to actually meet and interact with another living human being. And, of course, there is always the possibility that the game will suck the life out of the player, the money out of his wallet, and the air out of the room…or Arena. But it’s still not a sport.

To be fair, some of the players have mad skills. They can Tetris the crap out of things. The military probably has hidden cameras in the Arena perchance to identify the next person recruited to sit in a portable building outside of Las Vegas while operating a killer drone halfway around the world.

But it’s still not a sport.

College students are supposed to be really bad at time management and weight control while, at the same time, blowing their parents’ money. (That’s pretty much the basis of the fraternity system.) But now comes an announcement that the dumbass E-word is spreading to high schools. High school sports were literally created to help keep kids from becoming dumb, fat and lazy. Instead, some districts are going to take much-needed funds away from athletics and give it to kids to play video games.

Y’know, Dude, you might someday be able to say that you lettered in Legion of the Damned (or whatever that game is called), but you will never be able to escape the immutable truth. It’s not now, nor will it ever be, a sport.

• Florida announced that it has rejected nearly 40% of the math books submitted for use in elementary schools, claiming that the books contained “prohibited subjects.” Probably like numbers and stuff.

There was even a suggestion that the elementary-school math books contained “critical race theory,” which, as we all know, has never been successfully defined by a white person. DeSantis and his butt-lickers are probably upset that the books might have used the terms African-American and/or Black instead of the prescribed term “Negro.”

• The fragile majority in the Israeli government fell apart last week over a dispute about bread. Former majority whip Idit Silman switched over to the Netanyahu coalition after Israel’s Health Ministry told hospitals that they should allow visitors to bring leavened bread into their buildings during Passover. Apparently, that’s not kosher (during Passover).

Lord knows I’m not going to criticize someone’s religion and/or their strict adherence thereto. But, apparently, there were some good, common-sense reasons behind the Health Ministry’s ruling. Add to that the fact that Israel’s High Court ruled in 2020 that hospitals do not have the right to be “bread police.”

Stilman says that she is so religiously strict that she could not, in good conscience, remain in the ruling coalition. So she jumped ship and will now have to try to find different people to help her get her pet project passed through the Knesset. She wants to have all (male) Israeli soldiers to have their sperm frozen.

• Among the questions that the NFL asks prospective players at its meat-market Combine are “Do you find your mother attractive?” and “At what age did you lose your virginity?”

I’m not sure exactly what the correct answer to the first one would be, but for the second one, if a player wants to go high in the draft and make more money, the answer should be “I still haven’t lost it. I save all my energy for the field.”

• Finally, I don’t know if you saw this, but a Republican legislator in Tennessee, while voting on a bill that would make it a crime for homeless people to camp on public property, cited Adolf Hitler as a shining example for the homeless. State Sen. Frank Niceley said, “I wanna give you a little history on homelessness, In 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books. So a lot of these people, it’s not a dead end. They can come out of this, these homeless camps, and have a productive life, or in Hitler’s case a very unproductive life. I support this bill.”

So, instead of Hoovervilles, in Tennessee, they’re now Hitlervilles.

This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2022.