Randy Moss Pretends to Moon Crowd; Morons Outraged

For those of you who watched the NFL playoffs this weekend, you realize that I incorrectly picked the Seattle Seahawks to beat the Rams this weekend. Hopefully, none of you took my advice and put your retirement on the game. I was kidding when I suggested that you should do that.

You probably also saw the Minnesota Vikings' Randy Moss pretend to moon the fans at Green Bay's Lambeau Field, after scoring a touchdown in the 4th Quarter of Sunday's game. As far as the act itself, it was barely noteworthy in my opinion. Reaction to Moss' celebration has varied from who cares (which adequately sums up my feeling) to Fox Sports Anchor Daryl Johnston calling for Moss to be suspended. Most observers in the media think Moss will likely be fined the customary $5000 for an obscene gesture by the NFL.

Jake Plummer, Quarterback and interception aficionado for the Denver Broncos, received such a fine by the NFL for giving the finger to fans in Denver at the end of the first half in the Miami Dolphins game earlier this season. I wonder if Daryl Johnston was calling for Jake Plummer's suspension after that incident. I can tell you that he wasn't. But, that's probably because flipping people off is much less offensive than pretending to moon the crowd, right?

The problem I have with all of this is that by putting it as the top story from an exciting weekend of football, as Fox Sports currently has, you're giving Randy Moss the attention that he craves. It's not even worth the amount of time and energy that it takes a someone to write it up, and Fox is making it front page news.

Uh Oh! We're back to exactly what I was talking about on Friday with the things that people choose to get pissed off about. Randy's actions on Sunday were absolutely and completely inconsequential in our lives, and people are acting like he lied about weapons of mass destruction and got us into a war where thousands of people have died unnecessarily. Oh wait, we wouldn't really get all that upset about that, would we? In fact, Randy Moss might be President right now if he had done that. But, as per usual, I digress.

I have a suggestion for Daryl Johnston and anyone else who actually gave more than 2 seconds of consideration to Randy's ridiculous display: take that same outrage you are subjecting us to about football, and direct it towards something that really matters. How about what the hell we're going to do about North Korea, or why the Bush Administration refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol, or why 10% of US children have no health insurance?

I don't care if Randy Moss sticks a banana up his ass the next time he scores a touchdown. If we didn't heap attention on him or Terrell Owens or Joe Horn each time they did something stupid like that, it would go away. And the best part about not caring, is that even if he continued to do it, we don't care because he's just a football player! See how easy that is? No time spent worrying about what will Randy do next. Maybe we even start putting our thinking caps on and trying to solve some real problems like how exactly are we supposed to force Iraq to become a democracy or how to prevent terrorists from attacking power plants. Outrage is such a powerful thing, except when it's inappropriately applied under circumstances we should have barely even noticed.