Bruce Jenner won the ESPN courage award last night.
It’s a shame that courage, of all the virtues, has been so cheapened in our culture. It’s the one thing we need most, but most lack, or most often fail to understand. Just look at that story out of DC from a few weeks ago. A man was beaten and stabbed to death in the middle of the day, on the middle of a train, while dozens of other men huddled in corners watching it happen.
The assailant, I should mention, was something like five and a half feet tall, a buck twenty. He could have been easily overpowered by one other man, certainly two. Unless this dude was a martial arts master ninja, there’s no way he could have killed the whole train with one sharp object. Yet the other men sat and hid and watched a young college student get hacked to death. Nobody tried to help. Nobody.
Courage. We need courage. We need courage in less dramatic ways. We need courage in the routine, everyday sense of the word. The courage to be moral, honest, upright. The courage to lead our families, to stay loyal, to maintain our character and integrity in these trying times.
But this is what we get instead. A bunch of fawning children handing a courage award to a rich man in a dress. It should come as no surprise that reports today indicate Jenner’s PR team asked ESPN to give him the courage award in exchange for mentions on his reality show.
It’s all a fraud. It’s all a joke. But still the sycophants on social media fell over themselves applauding Bruce for his courage.
No, Bruce Jenner is not courageous, and I’ll give you several reasons why:
1) Courage is defined as the willingness to do the right thing in the face of adversity. Mutilating your genitals and playing dress up is not “the right thing.” It’s the sick thing, the delusional thing, but certainly not the right thing.
2) There was no adversity here. Aside from myself and a small minority of other commentators, virtually everyone has applauded Bruce, using the sorts of glowing adjectives previously reserved for saints and war heroes. Courage is not the ability to cope with near-universal praise and adoration. Courage is not the willingness to be complimented and told how awesome and beautiful you are.
3) Jenner stood to gain financially from this decision. He’s reaped millions in TV deals, book deals, and other promotional revenue. Courage is not the audacity to stand firm while people hand you massive wads of cash.
4) Jenner cut himself up and started wearing girl clothes because he wanted to. It makes him feel good. It satisfies some disordered desire in his mind. Even without the fame and fortune he has earned from this perverse charade, he would still be doing it merely because it satisfies an urge. Notice that a true courageous person often feels the urge NOT to do whatever it is he’s doing because he knows he will not benefit from it at all. If one man had stood up on that train in DC and tried to stop that murder from happening, he would have been acting against his desires and urges, thus he’d have been courageous.
5) Due to all the bad publicity, ESPN made up some other award to give Lauren Hill, the teenage basketball player who died of cancer earlier this year. But that does not absolve them.
Before dying, she dedicated her last moments on Earth to raising awareness about the disease, and money for research. She also pursued and achieved her goal of taking the court for a college basketball game. She faced down her own mortality and acted with immense bravery and dignity, despite not profiting at all from it. She knew she wouldn’t be around to benefit from the money she raised. She knew she’d likely die before she achieved any kind of fleeting fame. There were no TV contracts or book deals. No commercial spots. No PR teams. No stunts. No gimmicks. No self-congratulation. She just lived out her abbreviated life with poise, grace, and strength, and inspired millions in the process.
ESPN snubbed her for Jenner. They say it’s a myth that she was “runner up.” I believe them. Turns out, she was never even considered. Jenner was the only one they ever thought about, according to them. That is a disgrace. Ms. Hill had courage that Bruce Jenner can’t even conceive of. She did something that dwarfs anything Jenner has achieved, and that includes winning an Olympic medal. If anyone in sports deserved a courage award, it was her.
6) If you look at the rest of Bruce’s life, you find estranged children, ex wives, broken families, and a dead woman who he recently killed in a car crash. The fact that we are awarding this sort of man with any kind of attention, much less a damned courage award, is lunacy. He needs counseling. Extensive, prolonged counseling. And Jesus. And I think he should think about taking some of his millions and maybe think about giving a few bucks to the family of the woman he killed. Just a thought. You know, because he’s so courageous and all.
Source:
https://www.facebook.com/MattWalshBlog/
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