The Brawl: Are we sick of it yet?

Well, duh: of course we are. Naturally, that hasn't stopped the media from indulging in an early Thanksgiving orgy of excess that continues as I speak. After Stern handed down the suspensions, the Monday morning SportsCenter devoted its first 25 minutes (and of course, "much more" later) to still more analysis and long-faced on-the-scene correspondents intoning soberly about the end of civilization as we know it. Deep down, of course, you know that they were practically doing backflips at the chance to do a "real story" and picturing how this bit was going to fit into their CNN audition tape. The NBA Shootaround folks even tried to pull off a Nightline effect with John Saunders as Koppel interviewing the experts on split-screen: two guys who on their normal shows try to out-jive the other with their street-hip talk. Now we're supposed to take them seriously as social commentators, I guess.

I should get the obligatory "Artest's behavior was inexcusable" out of the way right here. Because it was. As bad as it is to get a beer thrown at you, you just don't climb into the stands like that. That action crossed the line between a basketball fight and a full-scale rumble. But I still am surprised at the lack of outrage over the Detroit fans' behavior. Throwing a beer is also absolutely inexcusable. Sports fans rely on (and hence abuse) built-in security mechanisms and social norms to yell obscenities and epithets and generally act like complete idiots with impunity, and as far as I'm concerned, they got what they deserved. (Except, of course, for the fact that Artest went after the wrong guy. Slight problem there.) Especially those who in turn crossed their own line and went onto the court.

I mean, suppose that Artest had taken the high road and not done anything after getting pegged with a beer (which, remember, is what I too am saying he should have done). What would have happened to the offending fan? On the off chance that they could have actually caught him, what would they have done with him? I don't know, but almost nothing happened to those two White Sox fans who attacked the Royals first-base coach a couple of years ago. What I would like to have seen is for him to get a free smack in the face.

But as bad as all that was, what bothers me more than anything is the inevitable lawsuits that came. We've all done stupid things in the heat of a moment, and we should be punished for it. But to sit down with a lawyer and make a calculated decision to try and make a profit off the whole unfortunate incident is to me the real sign of what is wrong in our society today. And nobody's writing about that.