BT Calgary Blogs

Until very recently Mr. Reynolds was a little-known sports agent based in Burlington, Ontario, with a stable of a dozen or so National Hockey League players.  None of them has elite status, with the possible exception of Mike Fisher, late of the Ottawa Senators and now doing his thing with the Nashville Predators. 

However, because of a tweet the other day about the evils of same-sex marriage, Reynolds is now – fleetingly, one hopes – not so little-known as before.  In fact, he’s achieved a certain notoriety in the wake of his tweet, which he composed after NHL pest Sean Avery appeared in a TV public service announcement, in New York.  It was a 30 second spot  in which Avery declared his support for same-sex marriage, and clearly implied that other professional athletes should do the same. 

Now I’m not exactly a big Sean Avery fan because he’s been prone to stupid behaviour on the ice (waving his stick in front of New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur), and ignorant utterances off it (blabbering away about how NHL defenceman Dion Phaneuf should have better taste than to hang out with women who’d previously been rooming, as it were, with the mighty Avery himself).  But with the release of the New York video, Avery has at least  revealed himself to be a man of some social conscience and awareness – which certainly cannot be said of Todd Reynolds.

“Very sad to read Sean Avery’s misguided support of same gender marriage.  Legal or not, it will always be wrong.”

That tweet is the language of a rigidly evangelistic and intolerant throwback to a social construct long since past.  But Reynolds has nothing on his business partner, who also happens to be his father:  same sex marriage, according to dad, is akin to bestiality, which can only be descibed as an opinion bordering on the grotesque.  It does reveal, however, the genesis of Todd-boy’s attitude:  what father thinks and does, so too the son. 

We can only hope Todd Reynold’s few moments in the twitter sun -  and latterly, in maintstream newspaper headlines – will soon dim and in fact they undoubtedly will.  But there’s a wider issue at hand here, and that’s the existence of a significant psychological problem, I think, among NHL players.  They’re terrified – with the obvious exception, now, of Sean Avery – of acknowledging the mere presence in our society of same sex marriage, or for that matter gays and lesbians, period.  They’re desperately afraid of being shunned, stigmatized, ridiculed within the macho-man enclosure of professional hockey – and so even the 10 percent or thereabouts of NHL players who themselves can be statistically presumed to be gay remain silent, hidden in the closet.

They do so in large measure because of homophobic wingnuts like Todd Reynolds, who has now emerged from player-agent obscurity to stardom, however brief, among the minority of backward  folks who reside in some place other than the real world of 2011.  They’re bigots, all of them, ranting  against the sexual tolerance that  thoughtful, mature  people have easily accepted as the standard of modern society.   And when it suits them, the homophobic types wrap themselves  in the raiment of Christian indignation, as if to bring forth the fires of hell on men like Sean Avery. 

It’s instructive, I think, that pro athletes from all the other major sports – the NBA, NFL, and big-league baseball – have come out in recent years, although in every case it’s been after their locker room careers were over.  But from the NHL, either during or after the playing days?  Not one, because they’re trapped in a dreadful time warp not dissimilar to the cave man with his club (or metaphorically, the hockey stick) in which there’s no yielding  to pain (or voluntarily to concussion), no admission of weakness, and certainly no thought, ever, of admitting to even the slightest  awareness  there are gays and lesbians in our midst – and that in all respects save whom they choose to love, there’s nothing in their lives to distinguish them, make them better or worse, than all of us straights.

It’s possible, maybe, and perhaps even probable that Todd Reynolds has actually done the NHL a favour, because for now at any rate, he’s propelled the issues of accomodation and understanding to the forefront of the sport – by denouncing them in the context of same sex marriage.  (The irony, I think, will not be lost on most people, and perchance it will even register with a few NHL players).  And with the great strides our country in general  has made in recent years toward fully embracing same sex marriage, I have no doubt Mr. Reynolds will tumble rapidly back to the anonymity he richly deserves. 

In the meantime, it will take but one NHL player to come out, declare, and then be greeted with the marvellous reality that apart from useless jerks like Todd Reynolds, nobody will care one whit.  That player – and others who’ll surely follow – will owe a great deal to Sean Avery.

We’ve had before us this past week a sterling example of a witless dolt who represents the worst of embedded male attitudes, and presumed male dominance in the United States Navy, notwithstanding what might be described as its co-ed personnel composition of the past 20 years or so.

Owen Honors was until very recently captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a flagship carrier in the American naval fleet.  Honors is also the man who assembled a series of lewd and crude video “skits,” which were then broadcast to the crew – men and women – as part of the onboard Saturday night movies.  (Honors was actually playing at video production about four years ago, when he was the Enterprise executive officer – second in command – which means he wasn’t exactly a petty officer.  XO is a very high rank).

At any rate, the weekend movies on Enterprise featured Honors himself in pantomime masturbation, Honors uttering sly and deft slurs against gays, Honors and some of his officers in thinly disguised scenes of sexual assault, Honors happily displaying a shower scene involving two women crew members. 

The tapes then lay dormant, while a couple of years later Honors was promoted to captain of the Enterprise.  He remained so until a newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia (home port to the Enterprise) got wind of the tapes, got hold of them, posted them on its website, whereupon all kinds of public revulsion broke over the navy and its top brass.

But the worst of it was that the Navy at first countered with a couple of shamblng news releases, stating the videos weren’t actually all that raunchy,  just harmless little clips designed to relieve the monotony of long tours at sea, and not really worth any fuss and bother.  But the public furor didn’t subside and so the Admirals  in the Pentagon suddenly emerged from their somnolence, ordered full astern, revised their tale of innocence abroad – and relieved Honors of his command. 

The real question, though, emerges from the initial navy reaction.  You have to ask what else might be expected of a military institution riven, as most are, with mysoginist Luddites?  And further, whether the U.S. navy is populated, perhaps to an alarming degree, by juvenile jerks whose idea of “entertainment” is in-house production of soft porn?  It seems to me the answer is Yes, with further evidence arising from the continuing majority opinion in the American navy – and the U.S. military in whole, actually – that gay men are somehow not men, and should they wish to serve ought not to voluntarily confess to their sexual orientation.  In return, the real men “don’t ask”.  

Owen Honors is without question a pinhead, but he’s also prima facie evidence that the U.S. Navy has a long way to go before its preaching about equality, maturity, and sexual inclusion actually becomes practice.

I’ve no doubt that nearly 20 years beyond the fact, Kent Hehr still endures the occasional long night with no sleep, wondering why it had to be him?  Why a random bullet from a drive-by shooting left him a quadraplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life?  Why urban violence struck him because he was merely a victim of the terrible confluence of  ”wrong time, wrong place?”

Hehr has borne the consequences of that dreadful evening, in October 1991, with a great deal of determination and fortitude.  He  graduated from university in the highest ranks, became a well-known Calgary lawyer, and then latterly, the Liberal MLA for Calgary Buffalo in the Alberta legislature.  His biography would not be out of place in John F. Kennedy’s book titled “Profiles in Courage,” because that’s exactly what Hehr’s profile has been, and in many respects still is.

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That the “Reverend” Terry Jones is a bigoted crank is now self evident:  that the “Reverend” Terry Jones is a man of limited intelligence equally so:  that the “Reverend” Terry Jones got his parson’s certificate from a cereal box less so, although highly probable.

But the case about or against Jones doesn’t rest with the man himself, and his distorted view of American patriotism versus the devil’s cauldron, as he sees it, of Islam.  Jones, the preacher at that dinky little Florida church,  is in fact a dangerous loose cannon in the post 9-11 world, because he represents an alarming American drift toward extreme right wing attitudes and politics.  Whether he proceeds – or doesn’t - with his mad plot to burn perhaps 200 Muslim Holy Books to ashes, just as the World Trade Center disappeared in the flames of religious fanaticism nine years ago, Jones has already inflicted incalculable damage to his country.  The fires of religious counterattack have started burning with raging fury in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and in fact through most of the Islamic world.    

I’d guess that within the next 48 to 72 hours, the “Reverend” Terry Jones will be largely out of public eye and mind, although perhaps the U.S. media will embark on some internal reflection about granting a certified nutbar his moments on the international stage.  But the deep and very troubling problem he came to represent will linger on, and that’s where we find real cause for worry. 

Ever since 9-11, the United States of America has been like a heavyweight boxer, once a champion, but now reeling about from an unexpected and very  hard shot to the head, blinking and bewildered,  lumbering after imaginary opponents existing only in his addled brain, confused and frightened about a rapid descent from dominance to uncetainty about his  future in the ring. 

It’s an appropriate metaphor, I think, for what’s happened to the United States because ever since the World Trade Center went down, the country has been stumbling around, aimlessly lashing out at phantoms.  The foremost of those, of course, would be the mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, ghostly threats which cost 4,500 American lives and untold billions of dollars.  That kind of expenditure, with no return by way of investment (the classic military-industrial complex, with the industrial component entirely absent) was bound to raise economic difficulties and it did.  And recession was inevitable when the immense cost of waging a futile war was combined with careless, if not criminal neglect of financial regulation with the subsequent housing disaster, job losses, bank failures and corporate bailouts.  Pointless and expensive warfare;  economic mismanagement:  both have seriously damaged, if not destroyed  the protototypical American perception of itself:  a good job for everybody, comfort and ease, a standard of living far in excess of all other nations - all enveloped in the  serene presumption that good things are based on Truth, Justice, and the American Way.  And by majority, Christianity.

The historical U.S. response to uncertainty about itself in difficult circumstances, when demons seem to loom, has been to withdraw, primarily, to religion and faith.  ”In God We Trust” is a mantra found not only on American coinage, but also in the nation’s very heart and soul, and so it’s no great surprise to discover many Americans returning to the arms of their Lord and Saviour.  And it’s certainly no surprise that having done so, they would eschew or in the case of Pastor Jones, denounce all other Gods and especially He who represents Islam.  The 9-11 terrorists.  The infidels.  The Evil.

But the difference between Terry Jones and U.S. citizens  at large is that he spoke up, shouted from his little pulpit, articulated the widespread American uneasiness about Islam, and in fact did so with a religious wrecking ball.   I suspect a great many of his countrymen sympathize, but will not – at least not yet -  publicly endorse Jones and his rantings.  Americans do not wish to be seen as religious zealots and fanatics, and then too the inate sense of American decency, the wish to be tolerant, still prevails.  But it’s under very considerable stress.       

In other words, Terry Jones is the visible riptide, if you like,  of American angst which has been increasingly expressed, for example, by the emergence of the Tea Party, by the astonishing political durability of Sarah Palin, by the ability of a television talk show host named Glenn Beck to attract thousands of people to a Capitol Hill patriotic rally, by Arizona anti-immigration law, by a return in many states to guns in the holster, by incessant partisan fighting among politicians at the expense of sound governance.  The country is not that far removed these days from isolationism, which explains why – from our Canadian perspective - a lot of U.S. congressmen and senators  seem quite content to condemn “dirty oil” from Alberta while paying no attention to the disastrous consequences that would flow from a full-blown embargo. 

And so, nine years onward from Ground Zero, the genetic structure, the DNA of American society has become that of the heavyweight with the scrambled brain.   The nation blunders from one side of the international ring to the other, jabbing and windmilling  – but hitting nothing except its own sense of self-esteem. 

You can be sure of this.  Terry Jones, when he first posed the idea of burning Qu’rans, was intent on doing precisely that, because he is, after all,  a man clothed the the robes of Christian righteousness.   If in the 12th century the crusaders were going about right and proper business by consigning the Arab heathen to hell, then in the 21st he would do the same and allegorically send Muslims off to burn in hell, too.    It was only the intervention, in unison, of the entire brass section at the Pentagon, and President Barack Obama, that prevented him from doing so. 

You can also be sure of another thing.  The United States of America is deeply encased in an identity crisis, which has caused a great nation to lose direction, purpose, and in disturbing measure, common sense.   And if you wish to see the evidence for this, I would present the “Reverend” Terry Jones.  The American populace, by and large, may look upon him as something of a wingnut – but it hasn’t yet labelled him a pariah. 

That’s the problem.