Literal Diagnoses

Blurb: Josh London shows how the left used the John Rocker incident to diagnose anyone opposed to the PC agenda as off their nut.

Literal Diagnoses
by Josh London

If for no other reason than to stop people from asking me my opinion of the matter, I feel I must comment on the John Rocker incident that unfolded earlier this month. I know I'm a bit late on this one, but it fits in nicely with the general theme and tenor of the "People are Idiots" column.

John Rocker, a 25-year-old relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, gave an ill-considered interview to Sports Illustrated a little while ago. As it's the middle of winter, there wasn't any baseball for him to talk about, so he took the opportunity to unleash his muse with his general observations on life -- never a good idea for a ball player. The ball player did himself few favors.

He referred to a team mate as a "fat monkey" -- the team mate is black. He suggested that Latrell Spreewell, the basketball millionaire now with the New York Knicks, was given leave to choke his last coach because Spreewell is black. According to the interviewer, Rocker is a horribly impolite driver who yells at other drivers, guesses at their racial background, and, in so-doing, occasionally employs the "F" word.

Much of Rocker's interview brought to mind the incident he had during the fall playoffs. As memory serves, Rocker, during the playoffs, feuded with Mets fans as his team, the Atlanta Braves, eliminated the Mets. Rocker, the Macon, Georgia, slack-jawed-yokel, issued some blazing observations of New York fan behavior and was showered in turn with debris and verbal abuse.

At any rate, the little nugget that easily ranks as my personal favorite from the Sports Illustrated interview, is Mr. Rocker's discussion of New York: Mr. Rocker had no interest in signing with a New York team, he explained, because he didn't want to wind up riding the Number Seven train to the ball park sitting next to "some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids."

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was less than pleased by all this. He declared that the Rocker's bigoted, homophobic remarks were "reprehensible and completely inexcusable." Selig then ordered a batch of "psychiatric tests" to determine whether Mr. Rocker was off his proverbial.

Psychiatric tests? Ah, such a lot of nonsense!

It's over a year since I last rode the Number Seven, but I'd wager that Mr. Rocker's description was -- though harsh -- a not wildly inaccurate breakdown of the passenger demographic. Judging by memory, he left out the 280lb black women, but perhaps that's just as well. It would probably be very difficult to play ball wearing a straight-jacket.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I doubt whether Mr. Rocker is clinically insane. But, what do I know? I'm just a weekly columnist, after all.

The very fact of my questioning Mr. Rocker's insanity is probably begging for trouble. I have many times before been wrongly described as "terribly homophobic," so doubtless, even as I write, my own psychiatric-evaluation team is heading up the hill with the physical restraints and a large hypodermic.

Mr. Rocker upsets these people because he's a celebrity who isn't exactly a poster-child for the leftist agenda. He had the audacity to speak his mind before having it washed of imperfections. Which is, of course, quite dangerous. Rocker was basically begging for trouble and got it -- good and hard.

The New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director, Norman Siegel, has already said that, in his view, Rocker is subject to being punished because the First Amendment right of speech applies only in government action, not in the private workplace. Rocker's words may be creating a hostile environment where he works -- or worked. Siegel concedes Rocker has the right not to be jailed, but as for baseball, "his rights are not very strong." The Atlanta City Council is already demanding that Rocker be dismissed.

Still, the insanity defense might be a forgone conclusion. After all, the left has long taken the view that those who disagree with them are mentally unbalanced -- or "clinical psychopaths," as John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, described those Congressional Republicans who voted to impeach President Clinton. And, given that in social and cultural matters theirs is now the orthodoxy, it was inevitable that Congressman Conyers' verbal shafts would soon be upgraded to literal diagnoses. It was simply a matter of time.

So if you make non-respectful remarks about gays or single moms or career criminals, don?t worry, it's not your fault, you're just mentally unbalanced. Just lie down, let us clamp the electrodes to you, and you'll soon be feeling better. A couple of months' treatment and, once we've stabilized your medication, you'll be staggering out of the re-education camp with a glassy-eyed expression murmuring about how it's important that in a multicultural society we reach out to all the shinning hues in our rainbow?

Rather touching, really.

Needless to say, however, that in a multicultural society not all cultures need psychiatric testing. Indeed, only those cultures that do not mesh with the official Party line are subject to being psychologically tested and pronounced "gaga."

Take, for example, Mr. Rocker's boss, Atlanta Braves?s owner, Ted Turner. Last year Mr. Turner sneered at the Ten Commandments and attacked Christianity as a "religion for losers." Commissioner Selig did not rule these remarks as "reprehensible and completely inexcusable" and require a psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Turner, though I for one would find that terribly interesting.

Nor will Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell be undergoing any tests. While the city council has been demanding that the Braves fire Rocker, they're relaxed about Mr. Campbell, whose view of legal interest-groups which oppose racial quotas for employment is that they're a "homogenized version of the Klan. They may have traded in their sheets for suits," sayeth the mayor, "but it's the same old racism."

Nor is it very likely that psychiatric tests will be demanded for the Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad whose portrait of Buford Furrow (the whack-job who opened fire on a Jewish community center and then killed a Filipino mailman) appeared over the caption "A faith-based compassionate conservative."

This is all very simple: You can compare faith-based compassionate conservatives to psycho killers, the Ku-Klux-Klan and Adolf Hitler to your heart's content and no one is ever going to make you sit through a single "sensitivity training" session. But rumple the frilly shirt of even one sandal wearing, Ben-and-Jerry's-eating liberal, and you're a "clinical psychopath."

To me it is quite clear: Mr. Rocker hasn't flipped his wig, only flipped his finger at conventional left-wing pieties on "diversity" and "inclusiveness." He is to be commended for not being afraid to speak his mind, no matter how worthless his words may be.