Football Tough? Try being HOCKEY TOUGH.

Recently I got into a friendly debate with a fellow over how I felt that hockey was a tougher sport than football and that hockey never gets the respect that it deserves. The sports talk shows give 80% of their time, 365 days a year, to football, split about 75/25 between pro and college ball. The remaining 20% is mostly taken up by basketball and baseball, and NASCAR and golf and even soccer. Hockey always gets the short end of the stick. In fact, ESPN radio hosts like Colin Cowherd will talk about anything BUT hockey. I've suffered through a show after the Super Bowl was over and football was done for the year where the topics ran from high school football kids signing with colleges to the best  draft picks to the Hall of Fame to fantasy football crap to the combines to Wonderlic scores and why a defensive tackle doesn't have to be smart like a quarterback but a center does, but not a mention of hockey because he doesn't think hockey is a sport. Well, screw him. ESPN thinks the Scripps Spelling Bee should get air time as a sport, and every July 4th shows people gorging on hot dogs. They used to show poker for piss sakes. People playing cards...

Everyone talks about the non-stop pounding action of football. To which I say, bullshit.

Ostensibly, both games are 60 minutes. A football game is broken up into 15-minute quarters and a hockey game is broken up into three 20-minute periods. Each game is played for one hour in theory, overtime notwithstanding. However in football there are times when the clock is running in between plays, while in hockey the clock stops running once play is stopped. A Wall Street Journal article I saw once said that the average football game has an average of 11 minutes played in each game. Eleven actual minutes of play. That is from whistle-to-whistle actual play. Hockey has 60 minutes of play in each game. Actual play. That, friends, is whistle-to-whistle action.

According to that same article the average football play lasts four seconds, with a maximum of 40 seconds after each play to start a new one. That means 40 seconds of non-play inactivity of guys getting on and off the field, huddling, and getting lined up, often with the clock still running. The Journal of Applied Physics claims that the average amount of continuous play in hockey is about about 40 seconds (39.7 seconds, to be exact). As in both cases, plays can be longer or shorter than those times; that is just an average. In hockey, the clock isn't still running if the puck is not in play.

In football the ball is given to each team, without fail, after every score. In hockey the puck is never given to a team; there's a face-off and each team must battle for every second they have the puck. After an interception in football, a team is guaranteed the ball and therefore an opportunity to score. A turnover in hockey guarantees nothing, and the intercepting team must fight to retain possession.

There are stretches of hockey that can go on and on. Breakaways up and down the ice are often highlighted by intense scoring opportunities or incredible saves by the goaltender. I've seen many runs in hockey where lines have changed three or four times between whistles.

On the opposite end, football is categorized as one 4-second play after another and each pass or run is often followed by the referee announcing another "flag on the play".

For 11 minutes of football, each team receives a maximum of eight time outs, including the stoppage at the two-minute warning. Meanwhile in hockey, each team receives one timeout per game. Most games I've seen, the timeout is never even used.

Let's see football players, or basketball players, or baseball players make a save, on ice, against a frozen rubber missile going a hundred miles an hour, while doing the splits, said no one ever.

Games shouldn't end end in a tie, and both sports have an overtime period in the case of a tie at the end of regulation. After all, you're competing and playing to win, and in a tie no one has won. Both sports' OT's are sudden death, meaning the first team to score wins. In hockey there is a faceoff and each team must earn possession of the puck to score a goal. In football the ball is given to one of the teams, and they can score in the overtime without the other team getting a chance to score, unless they stop their opponents advances or gain possession of the ball via fumble or interception. BUT...The NFL only allows one sudden death overtime period for regular season games. If neither teams scores by the end of that overtime period, it is officially a tie. The postseason is still the only time a game keeps going until there's a winner, even if it takes multiple OTs. In the playoffs, overtime is still sudden death, but the game would continue until one of the teams scored.

In hockey, a tie game after overtime is settled with a shootout, except in the playoffs, where you play in OT periods until someone scores. I've seen playoff games go the equivalent of seven periods.

Both sports have players protected by pads and helmets. Football players have a cage in front of their faces to protect against hitting the grass or being hit with an air-filled leather bag. Hockey players have an optional visor that covers half their face from impacts with hard ice, hard boards, sticks to the face, or being hit with a frozen disc of vulcanized rubber...and in some cases fists.

Yeah, the fights. Fighting is allowed in hockey and despite its reputation as a bloodthirsty gladiatorial duel between teams of toughened beasts, football doesn't allow it. You may see an occasional post-play scrum or shoving match but not a bout of fisticuffs like in hockey. I'm not going to debate the pros and cons of fighting in hockey; that's for another article to be written later. Just accept that it is part of the game.

Hard hits? In football, bodies collide often running full speed. I accept that. However, in hockey there are open-ice hits body to body (some amazingly brutal) but the majority of hits involve a player being crashed against wooden boards and plexiglass. In football you don't run the risk of being hit with a stick or sliced by a razor-sharp skate. We're talking hard hitting, blazing speed, and the ultimate in agility...all while on ice skates. Sure, most people can run, jump, sprint, and dash along a field, but the rare few who can skate and do it as well as a hockey player are few and far between. The ability to fake out defenders and fly past the opposition is a highlight in any sport, but when it's done on two thin blades, the feat becomes magical. Simply, the ability to skate and move and shoot and hit and fight along a sheet of ice with comfortable ease makes hockey an athletically superior sport before considering any other aspect of the game. Add in the physicality of those hard hits and once again, hockey wins. Even ESPN has said that hockey hits are 17% harder than football hits.

Numbers don't lie.

Tough? Try Clint Malarchuk.  On March 22, 1989, Steve Tuttle of the St.Louis Blues collided with Buffalo’s Uwe Krupp in front of the goal net, and Tuttle’s skate caught Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk on the neck, severing his right external jugular vein. With a huge pool of blood collecting on the ice, Malarchuk somehow left the ice under his own power with the assistance of his team's athletic trainer, Jim Pizzutelli. Many spectators were physically sickened by the sight, with nine fainting and two suffering heart attacks, while three teammates vomited on the ice. Malarchuk was getting himself off the ice but he later revealed he had no intention of reaching the team doctor.

Clint Malarchuk's nasty famous moment

Malarchuk claimed that he was only trying to get off the ice and away from the TV cameras as quickly as possible because he knew that his mother was watching the game on TV, and he didn’t want her to see him die. He was so convinced he was about to die he told an equipment manager to call his mother and tell her that he loved her, and then asked for a priest. Instead of a priest, Malarchuk got quick-working medical staff, who were able to halt the bleeding and stabilize him for transport to a local hospital. Malarchuk's life was saved by Pizzutelli, a former army medic who had served in Vietnam. He reached into Malarchuk's neck and pinched off the bleeding, not letting go until doctors arrived to begin suturing the wound. Three-hundred stitches later, the wound was closed, and Malarchuk had survived, though quite narrowly. Had the cut occurred 1/8 of an inch higher on his carotid, doctors estimate he would have been dead in minutes. Also, had the accident happened in the second period, with Malarchuk at the opposite end of the ice from the medical room, he probably would not have made it.

While Malarchuk’s toughness surely played a role in his survival, real credit belongs to the trainers and medical staff who acted quickly to save his life. His toughness, though, came into play a surprisingly short time later. A mere four days after nearly dying on the ice, Malarchuk reported back to the Sabres for practice. A week after that, he was back between the pipes for a game against the Quebec Nordiques. “Doctors told me to take the rest of the year off,” he said. “But there’s no way…I play for keeps.”

The dude had his throat slit on national TV and was back in action in less than two weeks.

Richard Zednik of the Florida Panthers suffered a similar injury in early 2008 when his carotid artery was sliced open by the skate blade of his team mate Olli Jokinen in a freak accident during a game ironically against the Buffalo Sabres. Zednik was circling the net behind the play and skating into the corner when Jokinen was upended by Sabres forward Clarke MacArthur. Jokinen fell headfirst to the ice, and his right leg and skate flew up and struck Zednik directly on the side of the neck. Doctors said the skate blade just missed cutting the jugular vein. Zednik lost five units of blood (almost a third of the body’s total volume) and required over an hour of emergency surgery to close the wound. Zednik played another full season with Florida and two more seasons in Europe before retiring.

Richard Zednik's injury and subsequent scar.

Minor league goalie Dustin Tokarski took a skate to the throat and needed "just" 26 stitches to be back in action a couple years back. Winnipeg Jets defenseman Zach Redmond took a skate to the thigh during a practice last season. Just a couple weeks ago Brayden Schenn of the Philadelphia Flyers to a skate to the abdomen after colliding with Dainius Zubrus of the New Jersey Devils, and not only continued to play, he scored the game winner in overtime.
 

Tokarski's neck wound

Redmond's thigh

Schenn gets his cut from Zubrus

It's not always skate cuts. Paul Kariya, whom I went to University of Maine at the same time with,  took a nasty hit from Scott Stevens during Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup finals between the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and the New Jersey Devils. During the second period, Stevens caught Kariya watching his pass in the neutral zone and put the biggest hit of the series on the Mighty Duck’s star forward, laying him out flat on his back. As the whistles blew and the referees maintained order, Kariya laid motionless on the ice. After several seconds, Kariya’s eyes popped open and his face shield fogged over as he suddenly gasped and regained consciousness. Eventually, he was helped off the ice and into the locker room, and there was little doubt that the Ducks would have to continue without their captain. Because of Kariya’s past troubles with concussions, and because of the severity of the hit, many feared he would be out for the remainder of the series if it went to a seventh game. Not so.

As it turned out, Kariya would not miss Game 7. In fact, he only ended up missing 11 minutes of Game 6. To the shock of everyone, including Stevens, Kariya returned to the ice to continue play only 11 minutes after being knocked out cold. But he wasn’t done there. With the crowd roaring, Kariya took the puck into the offensive zone and fired a shot from the faceoff circle past Devils’ goaltender Martin Brodeur to help the Mighty Ducks to victory and force a Game 7.
 

Kariya out cold.

They complain that the football season is too long, too many games, guys can get hurt,  boo hoo hoo.... suck it up, buttercup. An NHL season and an NFL season are vastly different. An NHL season is comprised of 82 games from October through April, roughly 26 weeks (28 weeks if it is an Olympic year like this one is), not including the average of 8 preseason games in 16 days  (Toronto had nine in 12 days). An NFL season contains a four games over four weeks preseason and each team playing once a week for 16 games beginning in August and ending in January for a total of 17 weeks because each team has a staggered bye week where they don't play. That means an NFL team plays one game per week, while an NHL team averages a little over three games a week. In numbers: NFL team has 11 minutes of actual playing per week and an NHL team has three hours of actual play a week.

If you want to win the Stanley Cup in hockey you must win four seven-game series. That means you must play a minimum of 16 games, assuming you don't lose once throughout the entire playoffs (a feat that is extremely rare and unlikely). Football also uses the four-round system, though each round consists of one game.

That means to win the Super Bowl and football's Vince Lombardi Trophy a team must play and win four games. That is 25 percent of the minimum amount of games a hockey team must win to be crowned champions. Numerically that breaks down as follows (from the averages listed above: To win the Superbowl a team must be the better team through 44 minutes of play. To win the Stanley Cup a team must be the better team through a minimum of 16 hours of play. Numbers don't lie. A team can win the Super Bowl playing as few as 19 meaningful games.

Bruins fans will remember that Nathan Horton battled through the 2011 playoffs with a seriously separated shoulder before he was knocked out of the Stanley Cup Final with a concussion. As much as I dislike him, Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby played the final two weeks of the 06-07 season and and entire playoff run until elimination with a broken foot. Crosby also came back last season from a broken jaw. In last year's Stanley Cup Eastern Conference Finals, Boston Bruins center Gregory Campbell laid out to block a slap shot from Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin in the second period of Game 3 during a penalty kill. Campbell broke his right fibula, and still finished his shift, skating for almost a further minute before leaving the ice.

In the 2000 Stanley Cup finals, Game 6 had two more toughness lessons. Darryl Sydor of the Dallas Stars missed a hit on Scott Gomez of the Devils and crashed into the boards, badly injuring his leg.  He attempted to get up, but quickly collapsed to the ice, unable to put any weight on his leg. But Sydor wasn’t about to be stopped. While play continued around him, Sydor determined he was useless lying off to the side, so he used his arms and his one good leg to drag his body through other players towards the front of the net in an attempt to block shots.

Now, you would expect most players hurt in such a way would try their best to stay out of harm’s way and protect themselves until the whistle finally blew. But this was the Stanley Cup finals, and Sydor’s team was facing elimination. So, to the amazement of those watching, Sydor ignored the pain, dismissed the risk of further injury, and purposefully dragged himself into the most dangerous part of the ice, solely in the hopes that he might get in the way of a 100 mph slap-shot and help his team. The game, and subsequently the series, however was decided  by an overtime goal in Game 6 by New Jersey’s Jason Arnott, who just two games earlier had suffered a concussion and had four teeth knocked out of his jaw.

Hockey Tough. Yeah, I went there.

Deryk Engelland played for my local ECHL team, the South Carolina Stingrays, as a rookie. Another former Stingray, Nate "Big Nasty" Kiser, is currently an MMA fighter.

 

 

And don't give me any song and dance about football toughness and playing in the cold and snow. Half the NHL teams play in pretty domes where it's 75 degrees and no weather, or in cities with minimal winter weather at all. Even though an ice rink for the NHL is inside, it's still cold enough to support ice. You do realize hockey is played on a sheet of ice, right? That the puck is frozen rubber, right? That most kids learn to play on outdoor rinks, right? That the NHL regularly plays a few outdoor games every year, right? And when they do, they sell out football stadiums to do it. And baseball stadiums. Tough athletes, tough fans.

And lastly...I don't see the NCAA or any pro football leagues with female players. The pundits will say that's because it's too tough but the truth is that it's too sexist. Hockey, however, has tough chicks who play college hockey and Olympic hockey. And while the first female athlete tried out for the NFL last year and had her bid cut short by injury, more than 20 years ago the NHL gave a woman a chance to play, a goalie named Manon Rheaume.  In 1992 she tried out for the Tampa Bay Lightning, and was signed as a free agent. This was the first time a woman tried out for an NHL team or signed a pro-level hockey league contract. She played one period in an exhibition game against the St. Louis Blues, allowing two goals and stopping seven of nine shots faced, and played in another exhibition game against the Boston Bruins in 1993.

Everybody's Ducking Around

PROLOGUE: One of the hassles of writing this blog is that I am not a full time writer. I don't get paid to write although I dearly wish I did. In the interim, until some kindly benefactor comes along willing to pay me, I have a day job and a two-hour plus commute that cuts into my writing time. This gives me lots of time to think and conceive articles but precious little time to actually write them as cogent articles. I always fear that my articles are not timely and will go unnoticed by the public as being old news. On the plus side, I am not a breaking news writer; I am an opinion giver and keen observer of the human condition. I don't spend my day coursing the news sites looking for the hottest trending Drudge blurb or Fox News tidbit to blog about. I ingest, I absorb, I process, and then tell you what my carefully considered judgement is. This article below started almost two weeks ago and due to the insanity of the holiday season and the exceedingly fluid nature of the situation had to be constantly put on hold and re-edited as time allowed. Plus, I lost some of it this morning in a glitch. So here it is, gang. Like a good bourbon, please enjoy responsibly.

A couple years back, as the Redneck Renaissance was beginning (see my article here) the enterprising souls over at A&E (which ostensibly stood once for Arts & Entertainment) decided to jump on the reality TV bandwagon with a little show about these bearded bayou backwater boys who had parlayed a quacking call for duck hunting into a multimillion dollar empire. It was no big secret going in that the family behind the business was deeply, fervently, outspokenly, and almost fanatically religious. In my humble, yet oft-times correct, opinion, A&E sought to turn a buck off some simple country hicks who wore camo every day despite having money falling out of their asses, who had high-maintenance-looking wives despite looking like roadies for ZZ Top, a family led by a guy who once had Terry Bradshaw as his backup QB in college and gave up an NFL career chance to go duck hunting, people who ended their episodes gathered around the dinner table engaged in serious and earnest prayer to their Christian deity. I think A&E sought to poke fun at their simple ways in a world of Kardashians and Backdoor Teen Moms, and if it made money so be it. Wouldn't be the first time, or last, that limousine liberals in New York City decided to pad their wallets at the expense of Conservative Christians from the South. I say, Muffy, look at the bearded Neanderthal...

(For the record, I've never seen a full episode of the show. I get my Cajun redneck fix by watching Swamp People instead.)

Much to their surprise, the show quickly became the runaway mega-hit of cable TV. Fans of the show clamored for the second season, which was delayed when the family held out for more money. See, most reality shows on cable pay the participants peanuts until the show gets HUGE. The gang over at the Honey Boo Boo enclave did the same thing when their show took off too.

Ever crafty & wily, the Roberston clan flipped the script on the city slickers, and once the yummy bait was swallowed they set the hook and yanked back hard. You want us back to make money off us, yer gonna pay out.

Well, ratings were sky high for cable and A&E paid out, and fans went batshit cray-cray for the return of Duck Dynasty. Pretty soon, show merchandise was EVERYWHERE. Hats, shirts, bobbleheads, DVDs, a freakin' Christmas cd, bedroom slippers, books, games, birthday cards, glassware, blankets, damn near everything you can think of has the Duck Dynasty logo on it. And while the Roberston family makes money hand over fist from Duck Commander (and the spinoff Buck Commander for deer hunting) the name Duck Dynasty is owned by A&E so they get the bulk of the ducats gleaned from the average consumer who think to support his favorite show.

And last week, family patriarch Phil Robertson kinda threw sand in the proverbial Vaseline.

In an interview with GQ Magazine (seriously? GQ? I guess they ran out of chiseled Adam Levine and Channing Tatum  clones in immaculate overpriced Armani suits to interview), Phil said a couple things that sent the world of liberals on FIRE. As a devout Bible-thumping Christian fond of spouting his beliefs, who says he and his family's men folk sport those giant beards because baby Jesus said not to shave,  he said the following: “It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical."

The man didn't say "I hate faggots and want to kill them all". The man didn't say "Gays have no right to live." The man didn't say "We should all beat gays with baseball bats and put them in concentration camps." The man said, basically, that in his opinion, he didn't understand why men would prefer a man's parts over a women's, albeit saying it rather inelegantly. In his world view, based upon his Christian belief structure, homosexuality is a sin and he doesn't understand it.

Needless to say, the liberal mainstream media went apeshit regardless.

Then Phil was asked in his interview what in his mind constituted sin.

GQ: "What, in your mind, is sinful?"
PR: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says.
He didn't say gays folks were into bestiality or that homosexuality and bestiality were interchangeable, as the media is portraying it. The man said that homosexuality, bestiality, and sexual promiscuity were all sins in his view.

The man didn't say homosexuals were into bestiality, despite what the liberal mainstream media claims and despite what GLAAD says and despite what ill-informed people (99% of whom have NOT read the interview) out there are being spoon-fed and then regurgitating all over social media. The man merely said that in his eyes, homosexuality, bestiality, and sexual promiscuity were sinful acts. And, of course, the other quote that came later in the interview, the one the media wants you to overlook and ignore, was,  “We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus—whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?”. So they love the sinner but hate the sin, which is no shock to anyone even remotely familiar with Christian dogma.

However, we have the inevitable shitstorm stirred up like an ant hill by the media. And of course, like any good limousine liberal organization, A&E knee-jerked and issued a statement that they were suspending Phil from the show indefinitely, because they need to be politically correct. And then Cracker Barrel jumped on the bandwagon and said they were removing Duck Dynasty items from their store gift shops.

The backlash from conservative Christian America has been immediate and intense. Within hours hundreds of thousands of people had joined a Facebook group supporting Phil. Twitter exploded with posts calling for boycotts of Cracker Barrel and A&E in support of Phil and his First Amendment Right to Freedom of Speech. This has been unbelievably polarizing on social media.

Of course, Sarah Palin weighed in on Phil's side, because when the Liberal Media wants to question a Republican Mouthpiece, Palin never fails to volunteer. She simply can't resist. And then they trash her as soon as she's off camera.  And Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is on Phil's side, not just because both are Conservatives. That TV show brings a lot of money to his state, and other shows like Swamp People, Swamp Pawn, Cajun Pawn Stars, Bayou Billioniares, and Sons of Guns. There's big revenue in reality TV. Jobs, taxes, local purchases, tourism...and it's the Governor's job to promote the state economy. His support isn't just common politics, it's good politics.

One of my friends posted an article on Facebook that pretty much sums up the liberal view on things. Funny thing is though, is that my friend is generally mostly Conservative with Libertarian leanings so posting this wildly liberal progressive article kinda floored me. The author of the article, one Allen Clifton, basically said that the suspension of Roberston wasn't a free speech issue but rather an employer taking an employee to task for making them look bad. "The suspension of Phil Robertson is not an attack on Robertson’s right to believe how he wants.  It’s a consequence from an employer for him expressing an opinion which A&E feels represents them in a negative light.".

But really, Phil doesn't work for A&E. He works for himself and for Duck Commander, and A&E is just making money off him. Yes, they have a working relationship and there are legal contracts between them but he's not a standard run of the mill A&E employee. He's doing them a much bigger favor than they're doing him. He doesn't need that show and he really doesn't need their money. He said in the GQ article that he knows it isn't going to last forever: "Let’s face it,” he says. “Three, four, five years, we’re out of here. You know what I’m saying? It’s a TV show. This thing ain’t gonna last forever. No way.". But yeah, I'll grant that A&E felt that they needed to backpedal away from the interview when they felt that their Golden Cash Cow was a bull in a china shop and that people were going to misconstrue his statements immediately. Funny thing is....they had a PR person there when the interview was going on and somehow no one stepped in and said "Hey, Phil, you may wanna dial it back a bit", or "This is Phil's opinion and not the opinion of A&E". In fact, all they really had to do was issue a statement saying that these weren't the views of A&E and that while his show is on their network Phil's views are his alone and not ours. But no, that makes too much effing sense. Instead, it's easier to just say you're suspending him. More on THAT later...

The liberal article then went on to try and compare Phil's suspension to the firing of Alec Baldwin by MSNBC for his anti-gay rants and for Martin Bashir resigning from MSNBC after his attacks on Sarah Palin. A quote from the article:

 Just ask Alec Baldwin or Martin Bashir, two gentlemen who were fired (well, Bashir “resigned” but it’s clear he was forced to do so) for expressing their “freedom of speech” rights.  Hell, weren’t conservatives calling for Bashir’s firing?  So it’s absolutely hypocritical that they’re outraged by Robertson’s suspension.  Especially considering Bashir only had derogatory words for Sarah Palin whereas Robertson ignorantly bashed tens of millions of homosexuals. And Alec Baldwin’s show was canceled for anti-LGBT remarks as well.  I didn’t see many conservatives up in arms about that — but clearly it’s all about whose ox is being gored now, isn’t it?

Oh, bullshit. Or is it ox shit? Alec Baldwin's show was failing in the ratings so badly it might have had fewer viewers than people who've signed up for Obamacare. And he continuously goes off on hateful anti-gay rants when confronted by paparazzi, calling them faggots and queens all day long and threatening their very lives, something I don't recall Phil Robertson doing in any way, shape, or form. Baldwin's a crazed loose cannon and has been for years, and gets away with it because he's PART of the liberal media. They worship him and love him and he's ONE OF THEM, and only after conservatives pointed out his continual gay bashing and psychotic episodes that MSNBC realized they could disguise his firing for bad ratings as sticking up for gays. To them it was a w2in-win. And Bashir did indeed pick on Sarah Palin. Only his remarks were a bit more than "derogatory". Whereas Phil Robertson didn't single out any specific person in his statements, Martin Bashir attacked Palin directly and (I paraphrase) said that someone should shit in her mouth and piss in her eyes. That's a bit more than saying I don't agree with your sexual orientation over my religious beliefs.

And tens of millions of homosexuals? Even the patently liberal Huffington Post said in 2011 that the gay population in the US was maybe four million. Four is not tens. And actually not all of Gay America is hating on Phil...

Yeah, I know there can be consequences for exercising your right to free speech. But in today's America, this only applies to consequences against evil white conservatives and Christians. Anyone else can say or do whatever they want with ZERO repercussions, or at least no repercussions that aren't meaningless window dressing. Baldwin will get on TV again in short order. So will Bashir. Al Jazeera is hiring and I hear they're really tolerant of gays and other minorities. The Tolerant Left is anything but...
 
Funny, but the media is neglecting to quote Phil Robertson from his statement released after the interview when he said, "However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.” . Wow, that sounds pretty hateful, doesn't it?

Speaking of hate speech, it didn't take long for a cockroach to come scurrying into the limelight when famed adulterous coke-addled whore-monger and noted trainwreck Charlie Sheen weighed in on the issue on Twitter. Oh wait, isn't he billing himself as Carlos Estevez now in films? I'm not sure even he knows who he is anymore. Anyways....

Full Text:

hey Mallard brained Phil Robertso!
you have offended and hurt so many dear friends of mine,
who DO NOT have the voice or the outreach that I do.
well news flash shower-dodger,
I will speak loudly and clearly for ALL of them.
so, just when your desperately sub evolved ass thought the pressure was off,
you are now in the crosshairs of a MaSheen style media beat down.
(I’ll try to keep the big words to a minimum as not to confuse you)

your statements were and are abhorrently and mendaciously unforgivable.

the idea that you have a job outside of dirt-clod stacking is a miracle.

the only ‘Dynasty’ you are attached to might be the re-runs of that dated show.

the only thing you should ever be in charge of building is a hole in the ground the exact size of your head.
perhaps your beard would fit as well if you plucked out the
army of scabies and bull weevils sequestered deep in it’s sarcophagus of dander and weasel pelts.

shame on you.
you’re the only surviving brain donor I’ve ever known.

when the gators and Egrets kick you out of their hovel,
you need to make serious amends to those you have radically offended.

on the eight day when I was whittling my cosmic banjo,
I’m pretty sure YOU were the scattered dross I then used to light a fire and
locate the nearest Andy Gump.

repulsed by you;
c sheen

hash tag;
Duck; that was me

The Gods of Grammar verily weep. Actually, your friends DO have the same voice and outreach you do, because they just call you and you parrot their wishes. Tell you what, Chuckles...you have bigger things to worry about. Are you off house arrest or probation yet? How's the latest engagement to a porn star going? How goes the custody battles for your kids?  Phil Robertson has a degree and a thriving business and you have whores & coke dealers on speed dial. Move along.

Sadly, that drug does not tell you that it's a boll weevil, not bull.

I would further mention that Motley Crue frontman Nikki Sixx had some sort of blathering statement too, but that would imply that he is even relevant these days. I assure you, he is not.

Now, Phil also had something else supposedly controversial to say in the GQ piece that has the NAACP up in arms. Then again, the National Association of Always Complaining People always looks for anything to cry racism about. Phil, about growing up in Louisiana in the days before the Civil Rights movement, said:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

All Phil said was that he did not personally witness black people being maltreated and that as he was a poor white kid not of any social standing, he worked the fields right alongside them. He found them to be happy people, religious people, and not bemoaning of their lives or blaming Whitey for their woes, which so much of Left-Controlled Black America does today while collecting government handouts. Where in the above-quoted words did Phil Robertson say anything derogatory towards blacks? He didn't, but if a Conservative white man says ANYTHING connected to Blackdom he's instantly a racist. It's the Liberal Way. In fact, if a white Christian conservative American says ANYTHING about ANYTHING, he or she is a bigoted homophobic racist while everyone else gets a free ride.

But in Hollywood,  Gay is the new Black. Much the way everyone rallied for blacks to gain their rights in the 60s, the new popular Cause célèbre is gay rights, but the NAACP just hates competition from others claiming to be downtrodden and as soon as the focus went Gay, they had to jump on the bandwagon. That means that the Self Appointed Spokesweasel for All Blackness, disgraced psuedo-preacher Jesse Jackson, had to get himself in the spotlight, decrying Phil as being worse than Rosa Parks' bus driver and actually DEMANDING a meeting with both A&E and Cracker Barrel. Why Cracker Barrel? Because once the fur started flying they backpedaled in a hurry and returned Duck Dynasty gear back to their shelves quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Hey, Jesse, no one buys your Race Baiting crap anymore. You claim to be a man of the cloth, but you're also a known adulterer who fathered a child with your mistress, was recently caught up in a scandal where you harassed and wrongfully terminated a gay staffer who facilitated a possible affair with another woman, who once said he wanted to cut Obama's nuts off and accused Obama of being too white. You're a sorry excuse for a clergyman and an even sorrier excuse for a human being.

Has anyone bothered to as The Empress of The Blackosphere, Queen Oprah the Benevolent, what she thinks? I'm sure she has tons to say. After all, she can say racist things and get a Presidential Medal of Freedom from a man who tarnishes his Nobel Peace Prize at every turn. At least so far Al Sharpton has shown enough sense to keep his cake-hole shut.

Look, this could all could have just been a publicity stunt for A&E that went horribly wrong...or horribly right. There was a massive backlash on A&E for the suspension. Millions more people were in favor of Phil than against him. In that regard one could say it went wrong. But millions of people were suddenly talking about A&E, a network I myself only watch for the show Bad Ink, and in that, publicity-wise it went right. Someone once said no publicity was bad publicity.

Phil has been reinstated by A&E. People are all over social and anti-social media chanting "We Won!" and claiming victory over the evil leftist swine, but I think it's a hollow victory. You see, these episodic reality shows take months to film and edit. For example, Swamp People is starting a new season in February (a month earlier than they usually do). The gator hunting season in Louisiana runs the last couple weeks of August through the first couple weeks of September, depending on your region of the state. It's taken them this long to edit down all the footage into airable episodes. The new episodes of Duck Dynasty that begin airing in mid-January were filmed in the summer and fall. All you folks running around like the proverbial headless chicken worried about how the show could go on filming without Papa Phil are either naive or stupid.

The season is in the can, as they say, filmed months ago and editing is done. Phil is in those episodes. It was a GIVEN that he'd be reinstated before the new season to keep up this farcical facade that the shows are filmed as they air. And now he's reinstated and more new episodes can be filmed for later viewing. After all, money talks and even those asshats at A&E could hear the moo of their cash cow fading in the distance.

For the record, I'm not the typical conservative. I'm not religious at all and I'm more than okay with homosexuals and gay marriage. It's my belief that being gay is not a choice and that you can't help who you fall in love with and that if two consenting adults wish to marry, good on them. And if that happens to be a sin against some Almighty deity, then that's between the alleged sinners and the aforementioned deity, an account to be settled in the Afterlife by sinner and deity, not by me.

It's all been a wondrous smoke & mirrors distraction, really. It's been slow news around the holidays and it gave the conservative media something to discuss on the talk shows besides the usual fodder, and it provided the Left with a distraction from Congress screwing military retirees, from the utter disaster of Obamacare, from Obama releasing Gitmo detainees to go back to killing Americans, from Obama using drones to kill civilians at weddings in Yemen because a terrorist might have been in the party, and Congress passing a law to detain Americans indefinitely, while Obama and his retinue are on a four million dollar vacay in Hawaii...no wonder this country is headed down the crapper.

Boycott the NFL and the Super Bowl: Support Daniel Defense

Company founder Marty Daniel, a real American.

I'll preface this post by saying I'm not that big a football fan. I seldom watch more than one or two games a season. I really only watch the Super Bowl for the ads. And sadly, an ad that I'd like to see has been denied by the NFL, and for this reason, I'm skipping the Super Bowl this year.

Most ads for the Super Bowl cost advertisers upwards of a million bucks to place. Many cost even more. The average cost of a Super Bowl ad last year was $4,000,000 for a 30-second spot. That's in addition to the cost of making the commercial, and in general Super Bowl ads go for broke on the production value and special effects. Most Super Bowl ads never get aired after the Super Bowl; they're so expensive to make & place that some companies can't afford to keep running them after the initial investment, and in other cases it's more memorable for it to be a one-time only iconic ad.

Note: Yeah, I keep emphasizing the words SUPER BOWL, because the NFL likes to lord it over the media that they own those words and that no one can utter the words "super" and "bowl" together without getting sued and paying them through the nose. The media resorts to saying "the big game" because they fear the NFL and its goon squad of legal attack dogs. I, however, am not the press. I'm not the mainstream media. I don't get paid to author this site. I haven't monetized this site with ads for income and revenue generation because I refuse to be beholden to anyone as I give my opinions and spout my wrath and expose the truth that is the idiocy of the human condition. By & large this species is doomed, but I digress. Since I am a private citizen exercising my First Amendment rights, the NFL and its commissioner, one Roger Goodell, can pucker up while I drop my trousers.

The NFL is all about money. It's not about the football. Football is just the means to an end. The game is just the machination that makes them the money. The league has annual revenues of over $25 BILLION with a capital B. Hell, even Oprah doesn't make that much. The league is powerful, all powerful.  It can decide if you're cool enough to own a team; even if you have the money to buy it you have to kiss the ring (and the ass) to be approved to buy (or sell.). They get to tell team owners whether they can move to a new city or not (yeah, you own the team and pay the staff and players but you can't do anything with your team without our permission...) It's the football Mafia and Commissioner Roger Goodell is the Godfather. He hands out fines for any and all infractions whether real or perceived. If Goodell doesn't like your end zone celebration? Fine. A coach or player or owner expresses displeasure with a rule or the league or anything football related? Fine. You got in trouble off the field for something non-football related and someone out there might think football is bad? Fine. You broke the no cell phone rule to call your wife to tell her you were okay after receiving a possible concussion? Fine. You wore a different color sneaker to raise awareness for mental illness when the official party line was to wear pink for the breast cancer Mafia? Fine. The league makes more money per year from levying arbitrary BS fines than most players earn annually playing the game.

The actual letter fining Brandon Marshall

They'll fine you for throwing a ball into the stands after a touchdown but not if you just hand a ball to someone on the sidelines...they say they don't want people to to start fights in the stands over a ball, but then turn around & fire frikkin' tee shirts from air guns into the stands as if crazed fans already pie-faced from tailgating with a pony keg for 6 hours before the game and six $10 stadium beers by halftime aren't gonna fight over a free souvenir paper-thin too-small shirt that'll shrink to the size of a washcloth after the first run through the laundry? Please.

Oh, by the way...sit down for this one...try not to choke from apoplexy on this one...the NFL is a tax-exempt organization.

I'll wait a second while you digest that. Take a Zantac or two as you swallow the bile. Over twenty-five BILLION a year in revenues TAX FREE. I owed taxes last year and our combined income was less than fifty grand. 'Merica...

Like I said at the beginning, there's an ad I would have liked to have seen this year were I to watch the Super Bowl. The ad was from Daniel Defense, a company based outside Savannah, Georgia in Black Creek. Daniel Defense is a manufacturer but also has a brick and mortar store location nearby in the town of Ellabell. A second facility of the company is just down the road about 40 miles from me in the town of Ridgeland, SC. The company also sellsparts & accessories. The company wasn't trying to go global with the ad, but rather wanted the ad run in 8 regional markets, at a cost of $500,000. And the NFL denied their request. Because they're a gun manufacturer.

The ad features no guns yet Daniel Defense was denied due to the NFL's restriction on advertising of firearms, ammunition and other weapons. The league does allow ads from stores that sell guns and Daniel Defense does have a brick-and-mortar store, but the answer was still no, angering Daniel Defense's director of marketing Jordan Hunter, who said his company made sure no guns were shown in the ad.

"It was my intention to do a commercial that can run on mainstream TV,'' said Hunter, "and that shows we're your next-door neighbors, not fanatics as we're portrayed in the media.''

So, let's take a look at this hideously offensive ad, shall we?



According to the NFL, Daniel Defense cannot submit for commercial time during the Super Bowl because their products do not reflect the message that the NFL wants to send. According to their regulations… “Firearms, ammunition or other weapons are prohibited; however, stores that sell firearms and ammunition (like outdoor stores and camping stores) will be permitted, provided they sell other products and the ads do not mention firearms, ammunition or other weapons.” Despite the fact that the ad does not feature a weapon or a single round of ammunition, the NFL still denied their ad. The League even grasped at straws and pointed out  that the Daniel Defense logo was in fact a rifle, and when the company replied that they would take out the rifle and replace it with an American flag, they were still barred from giving the NFL half a million bucks to fill their coffers.

So we have a violent sport where huge men battle each other brutally, a brawl verging on fisticuffs, and often ending with broken men forced to retire after just a handful of seasons with debilitating injuries, including brain damage that the League has glossed over for decades without much in the way of helping the victims until recently when the media started calling them out on it...and they wanna bitch about an ad that focuses on self-reliance, and the responsibility of watching out for one's own family, THAT SHOWS NO GUNS.


Of course, whiny liberals will snivel as they so often do and cry about how guns kill people, like this whiny sports blogger who berates the ad as "implicitly selling guns", and that evil guns killed over 19,000 people in 2010. Instead, the NFL chooses to rely on ads for beer and soda and chips and candy, a talking baby encouraging you to risk your money playing the stock market and a website domain company that uses scantily-clad women as their gimmick.

If you look at the 2010 leading causes for death in the United States firearms does not even enter into the top 10. The top three are heart disease (597,689 deaths), cancer (574,743 deaths), and lower respiratory illness (138,080).

The leading cause of heart disease is inactivity, being a lazy lagabout sloth, and many Americans are guilty of such. Inactivity say from, watching football on TV all day on Sunday drinking beer and eating wings & pizza? Another cause of heart disease is say eating fatty foods, such as those served by the billions by NFL advertisers McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, and KFC. And beer ain't exactly a health food, despite those strong & virile Budweiser Clydesdales or the word "Light" after the word "Bud".

Soda consumption is also on the list of factors which contribute to not only obesity but heart disease and diabetes, both of which claimed over 650,000 lives in 2011. However, the NFL has granted PepsiCo extensive advertising time for the 2014 Super Bowl, despite the health warnings against soda consumption. It also does not help their case that both Butterfinger and Mars both have secured advertising space, because candy is also oh-so-good for you.

This guy will die from NFL approved diseases long before worrying about getting shot by a legal gun owner

There's always a lot of car ads during the Super Bowl despite the fact that motor vehicle accidents claimed the lives of 34,000 people in 2012, which is more than firearms are able to take credit for.

Yeah, pretty sure this wasn't caused by a gun.

How about Comcast, the giant national cable provider? They happen to own NBC Universal, who happen to be a big carrier of NFL games during the regular season. NBC, the National Barack Channel and parent of LeftWingNutjob network MSNBC, and employer of Bob Costas, the aging hack who likes to mouth off during games about social issues like, say, gun control...? Comcast, after acquiring NBC earlier in 2013, extended their newly acquired company's policy of banning the advertisement of firearms or ammunition in any program that goes through a Comcast box. Oh, and also they own Telemundo who also happens to be an NFL carrier, extending a liberal leftist message to our nation's burgeoning Hispanic population who prefer to be entertained in their native tongue instead of English.

Comcast also happens to have donated over $300,000 to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. And we all know how Presidizzle Obeezy feels about the 2nd Amendment and its application to modern day America, the America he wants to fundamentally change.

So perhaps Comcast, being the second largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue and a large carrier of NFL games, put the pressure on the NFL to deny Daniel Defense their air time to further their own liberal agenda, maybe even at the behest of The One Himself, Blessed Be His Name, Lord Messiah Obama the First? 

During last year's Super Bowl, a regional ad in the DC area was aired by uber-liberal former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a firearm-related ad. But Daniel Defense is being denied the same right with their ad. The big difference in the two ads is that Bloomberg's ad actually mentioned guns and the Daniel Defense ad does not. In fact, the Daniel Defense ad, as you saw above, does not even show a gun, save for the silhouette of one contained in their logo, which they offered to change. Furthermore, Daniel Defense also aired an ad in the Georgia television market during the 2012 Super Bowl without complaints from the NFL. Just sayin'...

The man in the Daniel Defense ad is portrayed as a man home from active military service, a chord that rings with millions of veterans, many of who aren't far removed from the war zones themselves. Wars though not started by the current President but have continued through his entire administration despite his campaign promises five or six years ago to end them immediately. More American troops have died under this President than died under his predecessor that he blames for everything he fails at. The same guy who left Americans to die in Benghazi and sold guns to Mexican drug lords, guns that killed a Border Patrol agent. The same guy who drone-strikes people all day as he shines his Nobel Peace Prize. The Left thinks all us veterans are murderous thugs and terrorists, so a commercial that ecourages you to be self-reliant and responsible and exercising you Second Amendment rights with a legally-owned weapon instead of cowering and waiting for the government to save you...save you from actual murderous thugs with illegal guns, thugs who voted for the current Leftist regimes...that commercial simply cannot be seen.

Support Daniel Defense. Boycott the Super Bowl and the NFL. Hit 'em in the wallet. And while you're at it, encourage your Congressional reps and Senators to look into why a $25 billion business pays no taxes.

Season's Beatings at Brawl Mart

I've done it in the past, not so much out of a deep-seeded need for anything being offered but more rather to observe the idiocy or because I was dragged. And while I've done it in the past it's not anything I ever plan on doing again, although there are those among you out there who positively relish the experience and revel in the chaos like it's a game.

Of course, I'm talking about Black Friday shopping.

As a rule, I eschew mobs and frenzied crowds. I'm not agoraphobic; I just don't like idiots, especially idiots in large groups. And really, what is a Black Friday crowd but a large group of people mere seconds away from turning into an animalistic mob after one idiot provokes another idiot after doing something idiotic, and taking the rest of them over the edge with idiocy??

Seldom do I see anything in the sales flyers that I desire, let alone desire enough to brave the angry throngs well before sunrise, clawing and shoving as they clamor for a discounted DVD. A couple years ago my wife got up early and spent an hour securing us a new flat screen for the bedroom at a decent price. I however was working. The fact that I generally work rather early the day after Thanksgiving means I seldom if ever give a second's thought to participating in the madness.

It's bad enough when people wear pj pants to Walmart but full on jammies and robes at Sears? STOP IT.

I recall in years past when you didn't know what the "deals" were going to be until they came out in the Thanksgiving Day paper. Now it's gotten so damnably competitive among retailers that the flyers get leaked on special websites days and even weeks in advance now so people can tag team and plan their assaults. I really don't remember any hullabaloo about Black Friday when I was a kid. Then suddenly it became stores opening really early, and then people standing in line at 4am, and then people camping out all night in frigid temperatures, and then stores opening at 10pm on Thanksgiving, and now, well, retailers are so desperate to part people from their wallets that they would rather sacrifice any semblance of it being a holiday whatsoever and open either at 5PM or just throw the whole day in the crapper and open like normal.

Thanksgiving used to be sacrosanct, one of the two or three days a year that pretty much every business would close so that employees could spend a well-deserved day with their families. My own employer is closed only two days a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas day. Now, I'm a capitalist and I believe in businesses being able to do business and make profits, but even I have to draw the line at forcing employees to be away from their families on one of the two biggest holidays of the year and I just can't be a part of shopping to support the decision of those businesses to be open on Thanksgiving.

However, some people I know were okay with working on Thanksgiving. One of my friends made about $600 for just one shift of work from overtime and holiday pay bonuses. And another of my friends had this to say, "Today I'm thankful to be working on Thanksgiving. 3 years ago, I did not have a job to go TO, and no hope of finding a steady one for several more months. Things were very, very bleak indeed. So when I say I'm grateful to have heat, lights, and a full day of work to come, it's 100% sincere. Enjoy your day!".

Just for laughs, after reading on Facebook how crowded my local Walmart was around 8PM Thursday, we drove by on our way home from dinner to see if it was the pandemonium being reported. On the way we passed the shopping center where the local Belk's department store was opening and it was indeed a zoo. I'd never seen the parking lot as packed as it was in the ten years I've lived here. Continuing on, the Walmart was indeed slammed, with overflow parking spilling into an adjoining strip mall's parking lot and onto the grass along the entrance road.

In my sleepy little village of 6,000, we have a rather nasty crime problem with folks shooting each other, mostly in gang-related predominantly black-on-black violence. I fully expected to hear horror stories from the local news about someone getting knifed or shot over a TV or XBox. However, none were reported. Instead, reports of lunacy abounded from elsewhere in the nation.

At 2AM things got nasty at the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia, with it being caught on tape.  Conflicting reports of the fracas differ on whether or not a stun gun was used during the fight. A woman was trampled by fellow shoppers at a Walmart in Clinton, Utah, on Thursday night. Police told the Salt Lake Tribune that store employees brought out a pallet of computer tablets around 8PM and were in the process of cutting off the cellophane when about 200 shoppers rushed forward to grab the items. A video of the incident was posted to YouTube. The woman was knocked over and stepped on, according to police, but was unhurt.

In Rialto, California a police officer was injured, breaking his wrist, trying to defuse tensions in the parking lot of a Walmart over shoppers said to be cutting in line. The incident happened around 7PM local time on Thanksgiving. At least three people were involved in the fight and two were taken into custody.Police blamed the chaos on the store’s decision to open the doors an hour early on Thursday night to more than 3,000 people crowded outside. At a Chicago-area Kohl's store, police shot a man believed to be involved in a shoplifting incident escaping in a car that was dragging another officer who had become entangled in the car after struggling with the fleeing subject. The dragged officer suffered a shoulder injury, the Associated Press reported. Two men in Claypool Hill, Virginia, were arrested after one allegedly stabbed another with a knife during an argument over a parking space Thursday night at Walmart. The stab wound was deep enough to hit bone.

In New Jersey, a shopper was pepper-sprayed and arrested Thursday evening when a heated dispute with a fellow shopper over a television led to an argument with a Walmart manager. After the manager called for help, the shopper attacked a responding officer. Officers also ticketed a 29-year-old woman who spit on another woman's child during an argument over infant clothing at the same store, police said. Stay classy, Jersey. In Las Vegas, a man was was shot in the leg as he was walking to a nearby apartment complex after purchasing a big-screen TV at an area Target store and trying to wrestle his newly purchased big-screen TV back from a thief who had just grabbed it. In Florida a man was arrested late Thursday after leaving his 2-month-old son alone in his locked vehicle to stand in line at the Waterford Lakes Best Buy. In White Plains, New York, a Walmart was evacuated Friday after employees and shoppers were warned of a possible bomb threat.

I don't make a habit out of reading the HuffPo since it's usually Leftist twaddle, but they also noticed how crappy it's getting for Walmart on Black Friday/Gray Thursday. However, you sure as hell don't see Wally World stopping the madness, or staying closed, because they want your money at all costs. Again, I believe in business and profits, but filthy lucre amidst the mobs is just nuts.

It's becoming the new American holiday tradition.

In 2008, a Walmart worker was trampled to death in New York as 2,000 shoppers stormed the store at 5AM. Later that day, in Palm Desert, California two people\were shot to death at a fight at Toys R Us. I don't wanna grow up, indeed....

California mall shooting on Black Friday 2010

Fighting over towels at Walmart in Texas

In 2010, a woman was arrested in Wisconsin who had cut in line, warning those unhappy with her that they would be shot. Also in 2010, several people were injured while fighting over towels that cost $1.28 at a Walmart in Texas. Last year, an argument over a Florida Walmart parking spot led to two people being shot. In 2011 in Phoenix, a grandfather was roughed up by police after he put a game in his waistband to free up his hands to lift his grandson above the crowd.  He was slammed to the ground by cops, who assumed that he was shoplifting. Also in 2011, 20 people suffered minor injuries at a Los Angeles Walmart when a woman used pepper spray on them to get to the front of the line when the store opened Thanksgiving evening.

Arizona grandfather  taken out by cops

And of course, since we like to export all our bad habits to the rest of the world, it seems only fitting that Black Friday violence should spill over to Europe as well. All sorts of violence was reported at various outlets of the Asda chain, owned by, who else, Walmart. In Belfast, a woman received a broken arm after being caught in a stampede over discount televisions, while elsewhere a pregnant woman was violently shoved and several elderly shoppers were knocked to the groun by a crowd. In a Bristol branch of the store, a man got in a heated argument with staff after being told he could only buy one cut-price TV. He was escorted away by security, before having to be restrained by five members of staff. After cutting one of their faces, he was arrested by the police.

The guy in Bristol getting taken down in the parking lot

Not quite the riots of your American cousins, but give it a couple years to catch on. Tis the season after all, and nothing says Happy Holidays like stomping people over a TV.