Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Why Bother?

From Taco Bell's own website comes the description of their new XXL Chalupa:

An XXL-sized crispy Chalupa shell packed with seasoned ground beef, crispy lettuce, fiesta salsa, a blend of three cheeses–cheddar, pepper jack and mozzarella–and nacho cheese sauce, red strips and topped with reduced-fat sour cream.
The emphasis, of course, is all mine. This bad boy tops out at 650 calories and 39 grams of fat...but just imagine what it could have been if they hadn't used reduced-fat sour cream!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Now We Know Why He Wears #4

I really hope our lawmakers are watching the NFL and Commissioner Goodell very closely right now, because there's a lesson to be learned here on how a good law or policy can go bad if it's pushed too far. Or in this case, too Favre.

The NFL's personal conduct policy was born out of the best intentions. At the time it was conceived, the league and its players had a real image problem. Tank Johnson, Pacman Jones, the Vikings' party boat, the fact that most of the Cincinnati Bengals' starting lineup was standing in police lineups on a regular basis--all of this was giving the image that the NFL's players were out-of-control madmen, and really, some of them were. So Goodell and Co. came up with the idea that if you got in trouble off the field, you'd be suspended from the league for a certain amount of time.

And at first, it worked just as intended. Players who committed crimes and were arrested, charged, and convicted were forced to sit out, hurting their team and costing them real money. And some of these guys were convicted of real crimes--weapons charges, animal cruelty, even manslaughter.

But then there was Roethlisberger. Big Ben was accused of sex crimes not once, but twice. Of course that's a serious accusation, and should be taken seriously. But in both cases, the police investigated and found there was nothing to charge Roethlisberger with, since poor judgment/taste in women isn't against the law. But the league decided that wasn't good enough, and so they slapped a suspension on Ben for a crime with which he was never charged, let alone convicted.

And so here we are, and now here's Brett Favre, sending voice mails and pictures of his junk to a Jets "game hostess" (whatever that is) turned Playboy/Maxim model turned token look-at-my-boobs woman host on the Versus network. IF these embarrassing messages and pictures (the voice mails sound like an eighth-grader asking his hot chemistry lab partner to the harvest dance, and the pictures--well, let's just say there's not a whole lotta junk in the junk) came from Favre, then he's clearly in the wrong, as a married man. But why on earth is the NFL commissioner's office investigating this? This happened two years ago, so if this bimbo didn't complain about it when it happened, that's a pretty clear sign that she didn't consider it to be harassment, and that should be as far as it goes. The NFL isn't the Sex Police, the Marriage Police, or anything in between. And yet somehow here we are, at the bottom of the slippery slope, with Goodell acting like he has a papal appointment as Grand High Inquisitor. This is something that should be between a man and his wife, not man and boss or man and public. That's something we'd all do well to remember.