Bob Knight lifted up the chin of Michael Prince with a determined finger and discovered that he is living in the wrong country.
Or as he put it: “If that’s an issue, then I’m living in the wrong country.”
It was an issue, judging by the replay of the exchange that was aired a zillion times and discussed endlessly this week.
By that measure, Knight is living in the wrong country.
This is Oprah’s country now.
This is the country of the sofa-jumping Tom Cruise.
This is the country of heightened sensitivities, shared feelings and the overeducated predisposed to emote.
The most shocking aspect of the finger to the chin was the parents of the player supporting the coach.
Given today’s delicate climate, no one would have been surprised if the parents had sought a high number of coping aids for their son: a psychotherapist, a grief counselor, a self-esteem trainer and a life coach.
No one would have been surprised if the parents had claimed their son was suffering from extreme emotional trauma, possibly irreversible, and demanded that Knight be sentenced to a lifetime of sensitivity training.
No, this is no longer Knight’s country.
This is the country that felt just terrible over the panties being placed on the heads of the peace-loving, virgin-seeking, Allah-chanting terrorists.
This is the country that sees the humanity in those who take a steak knife to the throats of the infidels.
This is the country that races to air the latest bombing in Baghdad because of the public’s right to know but cannot bear to air the beheading of an infidel. It just wouldn’t be nice of us. We are bigger than that. We have to understand the root causes of a steak knife to the throat.
We do not have to understand a menacing finger to a chin from one of our citizens.
We are outraged by it.
Or we pretend to be outraged because Knight has a history of outbursts that could fill a Dumpster.
He once threw a chair across a basketball floor. Can you believe that — a flying chair?
He has anger-management problems, to employ the vernacular of the times.
The testosterone-reeking males who sit in judgment on Knight have never slammed down a phone in anger, have never delivered a fist to an innocent wall and have never gotten in the face of another male and unleashed a stream of invective.
Knight comes from a different time in our nation’s past, a dark time, an unenlightened time, when the high school football coach of this space routinely used a blocking dummy as a club to his head.
Thankfully, for most of us, that time has passed.
We do not get mad now. Many of us do not want to get even either.
We want to give peace a chance and reach a higher state of consciousness.
Look at Knight’s finger. Look at it again. And again.
It is so frightening, so unsettling, so disturbing.
A warning should have preceded the showing of the videotape.
So there goes Knight’s finger to the chin, and here comes a eunuch speaking of the horror of it all.
Knight is hardly perfect. But his contributions to the game far exceed his moments of pique.
His end at Indiana was precipitated by a student who said, “Hey, Knight, what’s up?”
Knight grabbed the student by the arm and lectured him about manners.
The insolence of the pipsqueak was lost in Knight’s dismissal.
In a previous time, before educators and parents turned mushy in the head, that twerp would have been respectful to someone about 40 years his senior.
Not today. Not in President Martin Sheen’s America.
Now we have this holier-than-thou capacity to deconstruct Knight’s finger.
And we owe it all to our courageous free press, although we are still waiting on a thorough airing-out of the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that inspired so much Muslim outrage last year.
Until then, we have to be satisfied with pictures of a tired, old Madonna suspended on a crucifix.
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