Monday, May 19, 2008

Horses

This goes back a couple of weeks...but the whole Kentucky Derby thing struck a nerve with me. I was listening to KFAN, an all-sports radio station, on my commute home the day after the Derby and they were discussing the "tragic event" that happened when the horse was put down after breaking a couple of ankles at the end of the race. I am an animal lover but please, a tragic event, a catastrophe, disaster....sad, yes, too bad, okay I'll buy that but any of those other adjectives, I think not. This was being said and discussed as the people in Myanmar (Burma) were dealing with at what at the time was thought to be 10,000 dead from a typhoon. (This number got exponentially larger later on.) Now that is a tragic event, disaster, catastrophe and more. I am a big sports fan and an animal lover but let's have some perspective here. I cannot justify anything happening in sports to be more significant than the events of Myanmar or China or Iraq or the homeless of the world or AIDS crisis or on and on and on and on. Can a sports station discuss these things or can we have that conversation around our Starbucks coffee? Sure we can nothing wrong with that but let's keep our perspective on its real significance. I guess we can add this to the pet peeve list on this blog.