All the political talk of tackling inequality should warm the hearts of Jets fans. After next month’s game in the Meadowlands, it will be 45 years since the team won the Super Bowl, a measure of inequality that cries out for justice.
Oh, the unfairness! There are 32 NFL teams, so, in a utopian world, each team would win the championship once every 32 years. But the Jets haven’t won it since 1969 — where have you gone, Joe Namath? Some other teams, including the hated Patriots, are greedy fat cats who win more than their fair share.
There oughta be a law against that. Actually, there is. The NFL, in a quest for socialist-like “parity,” enforces rules that aim to produce equal results.
The worst teams get to draft the best college players. All teams equally share the biggest pot of revenues. A salary cap equally limits payrolls. And each year’s schedule gives weaker teams weaker opponents.
But justice, as measured by Super Bowl victories, has been denied. Maybe Bill de Blasio will require that Tom Brady play for the Jets? Maybe Barack Obama could issue an executive order that gives them extra points?
OK, I jest, but only a little. For while radical Democrats stoke social-justice tempers by focusing on income inequality, the sports pages offer a daily — and delicious — menu of stubborn inequality. Indeed, differences in quality are the whole point of sports.
And also in music and dance and plumbers and car mechanics and everything else that matters. Would you go to a brain surgeon who flunked out of med school?
Merit and skill deserve to be highly compensated. Karl Marx notwithstanding, there always are winners and losers. No system anywhere has succeeded in guaranteeing equal outcomes, including the “everybody gets a trophy” movement among social busybodies.
The societies with the flattest outcomes, according to studies, are Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where everybody except the ruling elite is desperately poor, and North Korea, for the same reason.
America is different, thank God. It was founded to ensure the individual’s right to pursue happiness, and guided by the spirit to cushion the blow of those who don’t find it. Our country, by constantly evolving, finds the balance better than any society in history, and New York is first among cities in offering equal opportunity to all comers.
Yet we are now plagued by false prophets — Obama and de Blasio being prime examples — who make a career out of denying these facts. They would have us believe that unequal outcomes always result from injustice.
They insist they only want equal opportunity, but point to unequal results as proof the game was rigged. They suggest the poor are poor because the rich are rich.
The unstated assumption is that everybody should and can be equally rich, or poor, or handsome or successful. New York’s new comptroller, Scott Stringer, promised to put “shared prosperity above individual success.”
Good luck, comrade.
The most optimistic way to view this “pink tide” washing over us is to realize it is doomed to fail. Whether it’s ObamaCare or de Blasio’s claim that “our mission” is to end a “tale of two cities,” extreme redistribution schemes eventually collapse. They never succeed because they conflict with human DNA.
Unfortunately, they often do tremendous damage before they perish. Taking liberty from individuals and concentrating power in the hands of bureaucrats inevitably results in stunted growth, lost opportunity and human misery. The powder keg grows as freedom is squashed.
That is the consequence of false prophets, even when they have good intentions. Out of ignorance and arrogance, they do more harm than good.
Meanwhile, the Jets, like all people everywhere, must keep striving. They might never win another Super Bowl, but that’s life, and there’s nothing inherently unfair about unequal results.
Kerry’d away with power
Each time I see a story about another John Kerry fixation, I know that somewhere, a village is missing its idiot.
Our secretary of state’s quixotic idea of what he should be doing would be admirable if he weren’t so off base and largely irrelevant. While he fiddles, the world burns.
Kerry’s latest detour from reality is a focus on climate change. He does that when he’s not pressuring the Israelis and Palestinians to make a deal that neither side wants.
All the while, he ignores real hot spots. Al Qaeda groups took over parts of two Iraqi cities and Syria missed a deadline for transferring chemical weapons out of the country.
Hezbollah is upgrading its missile stockpile and bombs are exploding in Beirut. Japan and China are escalating their rhetoric over disputed islands. Iran increases its uranium enrichment, Russia expands and Egypt staggers.
The list goes on, but Kerry isn’t paying attention. He’s got his story and he’s sticking to it.
His reputation for being self-centered is legendary, even by Washington standards. A senator told me that a popular joke had it that Kerry’s initials — JFK — stood for “Just For Kerry.”
Nothing’s changed, except now he’s got a much more important job he’s not doing. This can’t end well.
NYC is ‘ingrate’ hands
Readers were outraged at the shabby treatment of Mayor Bloomberg at his successor’s inauguration. Many emphasized that they didn’t always agree with Bloomy, but believed he deserved better because he served the city honestly and left it in better shape than he found it.
“I fear for our great city,” Gilly Safdeye wrote. “Appreciation and good manners seem to be anathema to our new mayor.”
Pamela Mullen put it this way: “Didn’t anyone in this new administration play team sports as a kid? You never leave the field without shaking the hands of the opposing team.”
Len Resto included a brief passage he wanted de Blasio to say, starting with: “First, I join the entire city in thanking Mayor Bloomberg for his enormous contributions in steering our city through one of its most challenging times and leaving me a with a budget in surplus, city agencies which are fully functional and for a quality of life which is better today than when he took office. Mr. Mayor, thank you!”
It would have taken only a few seconds and, Resto says, would have changed the tone of the day. I agree, but de Blasio doesn’t.
Asked later about the ungracious attacks, the new mayor said: “Everyone who spoke at the inauguration spoke from the heart . . . I’m very comfortable with all that was done.”
There you have the new mayor’s standard. As long as you speak “from the heart,” nothing else matters, including facts and manners.
I trust de Blasio will support that same standard when his critics speak from their hearts.
A ‘Gray’ betray
You can’t blame the Gray Lady for feeling jilted. Reports say the White House is spending millions on advertisements to showcase “positive experiences” with ObamaCare.
Such betrayal! Propaganda is the Times’ job.