Who came second? Third? Last? Splendid. You may not have won but the important thing is you’re still a winner. Have a medal. A diploma. An award. Have whatever you like, perhaps a gilt cup or a money prize, because you deserve it, my friend, you won even if you didn’t and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Boy, wouldn’t you hate to be one of those pathetic, wimpy… loo-zers.
Okay, let’s seek out a loser to jeer at and poke with a sharp stick. Finding one’s not easy. Where have they all gone? None around, only glorious first-flight top-dog winners. And then there are these other, lesser, winners. The ones whose feelings mustn’t be hurt, so hold off on the taunting and the victory dance. Those non-winning winners get to be champions too even though in actual fact they really – dare I say it – aren’t. So here’s your Participation Medal ($2.34) with the beautifully reassuring inscription: “If you had fun, you won!” Yay! But whassat? You didn’t take part in anything? Just stood there looking goofy? Fret not, fair useless lump, you receive the “Alfr. Nobel. Give Peace A Chance. Everyone’s A Winner” Gold-colored Medal because you, too, are a champ, not a chump.
Nobody wants to cause someone emotional damage. Picking on a loser – that would be like kicking a guy when he’s down. So better to help him up onto the winner’s podium despite his being the “L” word.
I’m a loser. I lost in civil court because I didn’t prepare my case properly. I lost at table tennis and chess because… well, because the other guys were always better.
Holy excuses, Batman! Could’ve come up with a cop-out there. If I had, it would’ve fitted in perfectly for this day and age where we’re all mollycoddled to the point of meaninglessness. Where it’s never our fault, always someone or something else’s. Where you may have broken the rules but you’re forgiven because of your deprived childhood or your fragile mental state at the time. Where a punishment that’s meted out doesn’t hurt. Where everyone has rights and nobody has responsibilities.
We’re all winners in this country. Shucks, we’re Americans, aren’t we?
So we’re heroes too.
Being a hero is no more difficult than being a winner: there isn’t a lot involved. You really don’t have to do anything at all: just survive a tornado, become ill, get shot. “Local hero Harry Flutenpusher pictured here convalescing after getting plugged in his sleep.” Valiant Harry displayed immense courage as he snored through the attack.
But heroics also come without blood. Just score a touchdown, sing, act, play the kazoo. “Guitar hero Harry Flutenpusher pictured at his recent sell-out concert.” And presumably before he was shot while he so bravely snoozed. Harry gets two medals.
Was a time when to be a hero you had to actually do something lionhearted like write a column for a San Diego website that raises the hackles of some in the community. Heh. No, please, you’re too kind. Writing’s what I do for a living so scratch my name off that trophy and save it for someone really deserving.
These days one’s valor is merely a measure of one’s musical or athletic ability, and to win all you need to do is “be”. In sport, it helps to be big. Brilliant play there by basketball hero Yao Ming, whose great achievement was that he stood 7-ft 6-ins in his socks although there were a couple before him an inch or so taller – and consequently that much more talented..
To be sure, our real heroes are in the military, risking their lives to protect their comrades and America as a whole. But here, too, what a disappointment. To earn a Purple Heart you don’t even have to bleed, let alone die. As long as the injury is a direct result of enemy action and you’re seen by a medic you qualify, even if all you had was a band-aid boo-boo. And that must surely gall those who’ve lost limbs and the kin of those killed in action.
Which is why we must quit this nonsense about everyone’s a winner and everyone’s a hero because it devalues our respect for the really deserving.
As an aside, notice how nobody’s even evil any more? Let’s see: there’s Hitler, oh and Charles Manson. Satan, yep, there’s a good one – or rather there’s a bad one. Definitely that Lucifer guy. The ex-wife, maybe? But who else? Oops, almost forgot Jeffrey Dahmer. He’s the cannibal chappie who dined on 17 young gentlemen in the 1980s and burped his last in prison in 1994, battered – but not eaten – by a fellow lifer. This guy was simply crackers, yet he’s lumped in with the assorted Nazis, Romans and Arab murderers that we’ve labeled the world’s most wicked.
Today’s biggest evildoers are the ones running those huge multinational corporations that poison our air and our water and our very bodies for profit and who corrupt our entire society. Don’t get me started.
Fair play is one thing, but America is a clear example of fairness gone mad. It’s the game that counts, not the winning? Nobody finds that sentiment remotely appropriate these days!
We’ve all got to win all the time. Coming in second is the same as coming in last. Bronze medal? Is that all? You can keep it, buddyboy! Up your jacksy! I’m a winner even though I lost… no, scratch that, I didn’t lose, at the very least I ‘un-winned’. But I still deserve the gold.
It’s what’s wrong, it’s all our fault and it begins in the classroom. Praise for average performance. Too many alleged adults whingeing at the teachers that the gold star should have gone to their child instead of that other woman’s brat. So the solution is to make the whiners the winners.
Being tops is everything nowadays and it doesn’t matter how you achieve it.
Credits just for attending class even though we dozed through all the lessons. Teachers themselves ruining children’s lives with their greed. In Atlanta we’ve just seen the largest school cheating scandal in history, with the GBI investigating nearly 200 principals and educators for securing big bonuses by falsifying children’s test scores. The city’s Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall faces 45 years’ behind bars and so far 34 others could also be incarcerated.
Performance-enhancing drugs on the playing field and in the arena, cheat sheets at school and shady deals on Wall Street and in Washington and everyone’s ahead of the game, right? It’s all one great big win-win situation.
The way I see it, though, only losers favor win-win.
ENDIT
© Fred Wehner is a mainstream Fleet Street journalist. He was a reporter and sub-editor with the Daily Mail in London before setting up and running the New York News Agency, providing news and features to daily and weekly publications worldwide. He lives in Georgia..