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Dennis Miller is one of the funniest, filthiest, but intoxicatingly sensible people on this gold-silver-bronze-money-craving planet.
Even with toxic tongue, Miller makes me wacko until I weep.
Whatever, there's ample sage in this wordsmith comic. I'm ready to nominate Dennis as Commissioner With Dictatorial Powers Over All of Sport.
He'd bruise some buttocks.
"Bad sportsmanship has become just another attitude," Miller writes. "Somewhere along the way, winning became not enough. All of a sudden, not only did you have to win, but you had to make your opponent look bad in the process."
Comedy is Miller's business, but sports are a passion. Or were.
Jocks could recapture Dennis, but only with deportment adjustments.
"We have given these monsters life," Miller says of athletes who mutilate morals, break laws, embarrass competitors and exude arrogance while inhaling obnoxious amounts of cash.
"It has got to stop. If these guys are treated like heroes and paid like heroes, then they should act like heroes."
Let's hear a big "Amen!"
Commissioner Miller continues: "Wealth and adulation carry a price. Don't give that `I'm not a role model' (expletive). If you don't think you're not an influence on kids, why are you doing commercials with cartoon characters?"
Not all athletes are waste dumps. I've been in a thousand times more locker rooms than Miller.
If we're taking a yea-or-nay poll, I'll say 90 percent of pro athletes are OK. Including some who are quite spoiled, far too highly paid, much too thin-skinned and only moderately cooperative.
But, to the disgust of Commissioner Miller, there are, in every house of jocks, a fistful of jerks.
You see samples of animalistic behavior, sexism, racism and ignorance.
When a man has multiple non-redeeming traits, it may well be a problem worth berating.
So why does a Michael Irvin get teammate cheers upon returning to Dallas Cowboys camp after an off-season of personal disgust?
Why do spectators laugh and high-five when some NFL defender, probably from their favorite franchise, smears a quarterback, then dances and drools over his crumpled prey?
Commissioner Miller knows.
"In our minds, despite all we've accomplished as adults, we're still the pathetic little twerps who always got picked last for games," Dennis says. "We're still desperate to be accepted by the hot jocks.
"We take their abuse because that way we're sure they know we love them."
These are not words from some silver-thatched, backward goat who can do nothing more powerful than wonder where the good old days have gone. Miller offers the tough love that sports need.
He's hip, bright and creative, if flamingly vulgar.
I wonder, would Dennis cut a deal to cleanse his language, if every jock on Earth signed a binding contract to clean up his or her act?
Shucks, yes.
A typical comedic but lobbying Miller paragraph: "What the hell happened to our formerly pastoral pastimes in sports? Owners are rapacious and disloyal; players are soiled, ill-mannered lowlifes; coaches are abusive psychopaths; hot dogs are $6.50."
Overstate? Barely.
"If I see one more athlete make a routine play and do a wild banshee itchy-dance, I'm going to slap the man senseless with my TV remote," Dennis promises.
"ESPN's Plays of the Week look like newsreel footage of Mussolini being oh-so-pleased with himself."
In conclusion, Commissioner Miller has this suggestion for athletes, which should be reprinted in even bigger and bolder letters and permanently affixed to walls of locker rooms not only in pro sports but at the collegiate and high school levels:
"When you're on the clock, give it all you've got. Be a magnanimous winner and a gracious loser. When you're off the clock, don't carry weapons, don't get into fistfights with fans, don't expose yourself in public, don't drive recklessly, stay away from the Bolivian marching powder, don't gamble illegally and pay your taxes!"
Hubert Mizell is a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times.
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