Albert, I appreciate the response and think you’re probably mostly right. Perhaps the central question that limns the difference in our ultimate perspectives on football is:

Nothing Nolan says here is inaccurate, of course. But she’s going to keep covering the NFL on her show, and that becomes increasingly problematic, the more bad shit the NFL continues to allow to happen. At what point does the clear moral bankruptcy of a sport that happens to be the American Man’s favorite begin to…

“What a silly bunt.”

1. Literally every beverage that is not coffee or coffee-related.

I would prefer that American football didn’t exist.

Actually it’s both, because by sitting through commercial breaks you’re tacitly condoning the over-commercialization of the dead air in between periods of men fucking up each other’s bodies in spite of the fact that the institution that employs them will not take adequate care of their broken bodies and minds after…

Bill Maher did a hilarious parodic riff on Australians on his show on Friday. This guy’s live-blog proves the point: that Australians are offensively nice, friendly and funny...and right about how fucking stupid American football is.

You’re giving Franzen much more credit than he deserves, Albert. In the first block-quote you supplied, Franzen uses two god-awful gimmicks (capitalizing the G in “Gazing” and the sickeningly cutesy, D.F. Wallace-imitating (very poorly) phrase “strokably bearded”) that support such a claim. They would have been cried…

The companies that make firearms, which the Supreme Court says are people these days, can absolutely be assigned a moral thumbs-up or thumps-down, because the products they make amount to the expression of their underlying beliefs. Companies that make guns that are nominally meant to be used for “sport,” even though…

Actually I’m not engaging in any mind-reading; I’m just following a solid trail of logic down to a conclusion that is uncomfortable to you. But then again, the administrators of your county have thought it okay to use taxpayer money to build you shooting ranges that are completely subsidized, so it’s easy to see why…

I think that enough evidence has mounted over the years (in the form of thousands upon thousands of undeserving people killed with guns by people who don’t need to have them) to ascribe “evil” to guns, at least when they’re, again, in possession of people outside Greg’s pretty sensible parameters laid out in the…

If you really did respect a gun as “an instrument of terribly destructive power,” you wouldn’t use them for sport.

Good lord, what a spectacularly dumb argument you’re trying to make. To repeat what I’ve said already, a car is not built to kill people. Sure, it can (so can a lot of things, like a steak knife, a paperweight, a necktie, even a person!), but that’s not its primary use. Let me know when numerous consecutive mass…

All due respect, I think you’re embracing ignorance. Cars are useful to society outside of a war/hunting context, so speed (as long as it’s safe) is a feature, not a bug. Outside of a war/hunting context, deadliness is a bug, not a feature, of guns. Actually, “bug” doesn’t do it descriptive justice. So let’s call it…

Well, you’re operating on the premise that such a thing as an “innocent gun sportsman” exists. That premise is false.

What does being able to hit a 5-inch target with a deadly projectile launched from 1,000 yards accomplish? How does it actually enrich your life, wielding that super-human power? If your greatest thrill is exercising a violent power that no human can physically wield without significant mechanical aid, what does that…

“I just enjoy some things more and some things less.” Not very introspective, are we?

Why is golf “less satisfying”? Because you’re not as good at it as you are at using an extremely deadly weapon to blow up inanimate objects?

If the thing you’re enamored with is the use of a projectile to pursue a long-/longish- range target, then golf should give you as much or more satisfaction than sport-shooting. You can sell your guns and buy some decent clubs with some cash to spare.

People who own guns who fall outside Greg’s sensible parameters fetishize/fantasize about taking someone’s life so easily, from a mechanical standpoint. That fantasy is probably subconscious for most, but there’s little doubt that trigger-happy policemen join the force at least partly with the perverse hope that…