Legalized Torture

Every Monday during football season (or at least for the first few weeks), I make the same mistake: I turn on Dennis and Callahan expecting them to talk about the Patriots' win the day before. Last week the game wasn't even on the menu because it was 9/11 and America desperately needed John Dennis' thoughts on the Mud People or whatever they were ranting about. Today it was the dreadlocks on Lawrence Maroney and Doug Gabriel. Callahan started off alright, pointing out the wildy inconsistent and questionable NFL clothing police have any number of stupid rules but no rules on hair. But his real "point" was they will be dragged down by said hair in the future. Call me oversensitive, but when two guys who went through the "METCO gorilla" incident talk like this, it seems like a friendlier way of saying, "This is a multibillion dollar industry. If you want some of this cash, cut your hair and look respectable like the white players."

Stunningly, someone out in the syncophantic audience called up to complain. Callahan beat him down with the usual logical fallacies. Asked why anyone would care, Gerry demanded the caller explain how he will feel when they get dragged down by their hair. Given both players are known as speedsters and players are taught to tackle by grabbing cloth, not hair, the caller just said, "I guess it'd be a tackle". Responding to D&C's homophobic mincing about how nice beads look in a player's hair, he asked if they were "the fashion police or something". This resulted in Gerry taking his one ok point, the illogic of the NFL clothing policy, and turning it on its head, asking the caller to explain why the hair wasn't against the rules. When the caller didn't know why the idiots that make up stupid rules didn't bother to add one for this, he was dismissed with "You're full of answers today."

And people listen to this all day. For the football talk, I guess.