Bob Costas turns NBC into “Sunday Night Football in an America without Guns”

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – If you want to be culturally and intellectually relevant, Bob, then you need to consider all other points of view.  That’s what the intellectual does.  The intellectual is merely just a thinker.  He actually thinks the problem through.  You know what the intellectual process actually requires you to do, Bob?  It actually requires you to consider all alternatives.  You do not have a preconceived notion unless there’s obedience to the unenforceable and God and religiosity is weighing in on the decision.  Then maybe you have a preconceived notion because there’s supernatural law and there’s man’s law and natural law.  The intelligent and the intellectual is required to actually think these things through.  He actually has to consider all options and actually has to consider what could have been. Check out the rest in today’s transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: There’s another thing that’s being talked about today and that’s Bob Costas, who apparently, last night on “Football Without Guns” night in America, made some sort of a speech about the shooting of the Kansas City Chiefs player who took the life of his girlfriend, then drove to the Chiefs stadium and killed himself in front of his coaches.  I have the clip here.  I have not heard it yet.  I have yet to hear it.  Jovan Belcher is the player’s name.  I have it cued up here.  I’ll actually be watching this for the first time along with you.  Many of you have sent it along and said, “Mike, you need to listen to this and you need to talk about it.”  Here you go:

[start audio clip]

Bob Costas: In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: “Something like this really puts it all in perspective.”  If so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf life, since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games.  Please, those that need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective.  You want some actual perspective on this?  Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock, with whom I do not always agree but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.

“Our current gun culture, Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy.  And more convenience store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.  Handguns do not enhance our safety.  They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.  In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed.  Who knows?  But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe—if Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Cassandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

[end audio clip]

Mike:  How do you know that?  How do you know he wouldn’t have poisoned her?  How do you know he wouldn’t have beat her over the head with a baseball bat, taken a different sports cliché, taken a hockey stick to her?  How do you know that?  How do you know he wouldn’t have hanged himself.  The pressure that can make one kill one’s self with a gunshot would seem to me to be depression that could make one kill one’s self by jumping off a bridge, or throwing someone else off a bridge and jumping after them, or by hanging one’s self, or by knocking someone out and then hanging them and hanging one’s self after the fact, or by poisoning one’s self, or by bludgeoning one’s self.  Let me ask you a question, Bob.  Is the actor Bob Crane who played Hogan on Hogan’s Heroes, is he any more or less dead because whoever it was that killed Bob Crane chose to kill him with a tire iron instead of shooting him in the head?  Is he?  AG, Sean Taylor, remember him?

AG:  Five years ago last week, yeah.

Mike:  What happened with Sean Taylor?  Some apparent nutjob breaks into his house in Miami, right?

AG:  Yeah.  He was trying to defend his fiancée and daughter and they shot him and killed him.

Mike:  They weren’t trying to mortally wound him.  They hit him in the thigh, in the femoral artery, and he bled to guess, correct?

AG:  Yep.

Mike:  What did Sean Taylor have as a weapon?  He had a knife, didn’t he?

AG:  I’m not sure.  He was in his bedroom and closed the door and was trying to protect his fiancée.  I’ve worked with Whitlock in radio before and he’s known for outrageous things.  It’s hard because, as you were citing, Chris Benoit a couple years ago didn’t have a gun, hung his kid and wife with weights and hung himself.  It’s not as if you can just blanket statement that if you don’t have a handgun that somehow Jovan’s girlfriend would be alive.  That’s a huge leap to make.

Mike:  Then Costas’ other statement quoting Whitlock, “Handguns don’t make us safe.”  What does make us safe, Bob, handguns in the hands of an oppressive police force or police state?  I think that one’s been tried before.  When the citizenry isn’t armed yet the federales are, how does that work out historically speaking, Bob?  You know what this is?  This is Bob Costas, who apparently was passed over for Brian Williams’ job, trying to get it back.  This is Bob Costas trying to either become or in his mind to remain culturally and intellectually relevant.

If you want to be culturally and intellectually relevant, Bob, then you need to consider all other points of view.  That’s what the intellectual does.  The intellectual is merely just a thinker.  He actually thinks the problem through.  You know what the intellectual process actually requires you to do, Bob?  It actually requires you to consider all alternatives.  You do not have a preconceived notion unless there’s obedience to the unenforceable and God and religiosity is weighing in on the decision.  Then maybe you have a preconceived notion because there’s supernatural law and there’s man’s law and natural law.  The intelligent and the intellectual is required to actually think these things through.  He actually has to consider all options and actually has to consider what could have been.

End Mike Church Show Transcript