As always, I apologize in advance for splashing politics into your sports bourbon, but we can’t go a full business week lately without a politician trying to act like he’s a sports expert. In this case, the politician is South Dakota state representative Steve Hickey, who wrote quite the essay on his blog on Saturday about why he doesn’t want mixed martial arts in the Mount Rushmore State, because the state’s Senate Commerce and Energy Commission voted yesterday on a bill to create a state athletic commission to regulate MMA and boxing, among other combat sports.
Hickey, who is also the pastor at Church at the Gate in Sioux Falls, has no problem with South Dakota allowing boxing and traditional martial arts events, but he will be darned to heck if he’s going to let MMA rear its ugly face. And as he’s telling his detractors to “school up” on Twitter, let’s take a look at what kind of lesson he’s teaching.
I decided to pick a fight.
And he comes out swinging with metaphors! Let’s see what else Hickey’s got.
The conversation on violence in society has to start somewhere so why not with our most violent sport or form of entertainment?
Well, Hickey wouldn’t be doing his job as a politician if he wasn’t lazily blaming society’s problems on easy targets. But let’s just get to the block quote that has MMA fans everywhere balling their fists in rage.
I hope you’ll agree that MMA is over the line of what should be tolerable with regard to “violent entertainment” as child porn is clearly over the line with regard to “adult entertainment.” MMA Cage Fighting is the child porn of sports.
It’s important to point out that Hickey claims that he spoke with “martial arts people” who told him that MMA is “a smear on tradition martial arts”. Of course, he didn’t bother naming these people, nor did he name the “cage fighter/PhD” who told him “elbows are used primarily to cause superficial damage and an elbow doesn’t produce a concussive blow.” And in his plea to South Dakota voters to help him shoot down this bill, Hickey cited the claim of a man who not only fights, but is also a physician and then countered his expertise with simply: “That’s ridiculous”.
Hickey also added pictures of two fighters who had suffered ear injuries, and disputed anonymous claims that he’s ignorant not by offering statistics or facts, but by essentially writing: “I see what I see, this is violent.” Regardless, the bill passed with a unanimous vote, and it is now in the hands of the state’s house of representatives. If passed there, South Carolina governor Dennis Daugaard will have the final say. Guess what – he hates MMA, too.
I’m offended that the state would legitimize cage fighting and the bloody violence these kinds of spectacles create… the way one wins in those contests is by beating up your opponent, bloodying them, kicking, scratching, punching. I don’t support in any fashion anything the state would do to legitimize this kind of behavior. I think it’s a sad commentary on what our culture allows in some areas.
How did Hickey respond to that? With another bullsh*t analogy.
Couldn’t agree more. Proponents say it’s going on here already so we need to regulate it to make it safe. Meth use is going on here too, should we regulate Meth labs?
Meanwhile, Hickey also posted a response that he received from a Christian MMA fighter who was disgusted by his comparison to child pornography, and after Hickey claimed that he’s more qualified to talk about death than other people, he’s totally sorry, you guys:
I regret my MMA/child porn comment because it was too shocking and people have entirely lost the point I was making. Forgive me for that but I was simply trying to shine a light on something those in the sport don’t want us to see.
Translated: I wanted to make a name for myself, so I made an outrageous comparison with the hopes of getting MMA fans like Burnsy to write about me.
Despite the bill passing with flying colors, Hickey’s blog post worked like a charm. Sure, he’s an ignorant jackass who makes unsubstantiated claims about a sport he knows nothing about, while hiding behind statements like “who would Jesus elbow in the face?” but at least he has people talking.
In conclusion, I want to make a comparison of my own. Politicians like Steve Hickey think they know what’s best for people, so they force their opinions on others as fact. You know who else forced their opinions on others as fact? Hitler. By Steve Hickey’s own logic, Steve Hickey is the Hitler of South Dakota politics. See how easy that is, Steve?
And in case you think this is TL;DR, here is my argument summed up in GIF form:
