I'd Rather You Shut Up About Your Football Team Then...

Grammar is important (unless the person who designed this wants to take a shower at Penn State and THEN support Alabama, in that order). This shirt is all kinds of wrong. It's poorly designed and violates trademarks and uses the word "then" when it should be "than."  

But here's what's about to happen and it's going to annoy me greatly.

Alabama fans will now post this all over their Facebook pages as some example of how their team is better than another team, as if one person's poor choice says something about every single fan of that particular team.

One fan wrote this: "Here at Alabama we treat people (or football opponents, or whomever) with class, dignity, and respect." This is a person who must have forgotten about how an Alabama fan saw fit to rub his balls all over the face of a victim who was passed out. When that happened, LSU fans got to act like they were better than Alabama fans because obviously all Alabama fans go around rubbing their balls on people. Much like all Auburn fans poison trees. Sure, OK, whatever.

Look, one of the many things I love about summer is NO FOOTBALL TALK. I have a friend who I love dearly but when football season starts I'd rather not read anything she posts. She says rude, arrogant things and she never shuts up about it. It's exhausting. I won't say which school she roots for because it doesn't matter. I have another friend who roots for the same school and he is the greatest fan I know. He reacts to wins and losses with self-deprecating humor or joy. He does not ever tear down the other team or its fans, no matter who they may be.

This is all just to say that I do not care who you root for, but is it asking too much to want a break from football fandom, good or bad, just for a few months?

These people will post this and then other people will comment and self-righteously proclaim that they would never make jokes involving the abuse of children. These people will very likely have made jokes in the past about Catholic priests. They may have made jokes about prison rape. They've probably expressed extreme boredom by putting finger guns to their own temples.

It bothers me when people decide what can be joked about and what can't and they get on their high horses about it. Who gets to decide? I'm curious. Every time you put your hand to your head to pretend to blow out your brains or every time you say, "I'm so bored I want to shoot my face off," should I get up in arms and make you feel like a piece of shit for joking about suicide? The only reason I would do that is to make you feel bad and I don't like to spend my time making other people feel guilty for making a damn joke. And I wouldn't do it because if I think people shouldn't get to joke about suicide then I can't tell my favorite suicide joke. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, joke about whatever you want. (I make jokes about everything because that is my coping mechanism. Your coping mechanism might be popping pills or drinking cough syrup or overplucking your eyebrows. I'd say my coping mechanism is better than yours.)

One of my favorite quotes is "Comedy is tragedy plus time." So who decides how much time is enough? I mean, angry Hitler ranting about stuff is pretty funny. And just look at this photo of Hipster Hitler. 

So go ahead, make stupid jokes within any time frame you choose. It seems obvious to me that jokes about the Catholic Church or Penn State or Hitler (or passed-out LSU fans whose faces have come into contact with an Alabama fan's junk) are being made at the expense of the evil-doers and in no way excuse what happened to the victims. It's like that time I made a joke about Ryan Seacrest when Dick Clark died.

But, seriously, think before you climb up on your moral high horse and try not to be a huge hypocrite. And, for the love of the English language, use proper grammar.

Related post:
Louis CK on Jerry Sandusky