Self-righteousness, table for one

Ok, there is a Real Post coming soon, but I had to share this...

I read this article, and I am simply... agape.

First, let me be clear: I love football. I really do. Friday night football brings back bad memories of awkward encounters with ex-boyfriends and smoking under the bleachers, but hey--football is great.

With that said, for those of you who don't want the bother of clicking the link, I'll break it down for you. There's a species of seabird whose population has fallen 75% because bright lights at night confuse them--the birds think the lights are stars, they get exhausted (the birds, not the lights), and either die from the stress or are eaten by predators when they fall to the ground.

Kauai, Hawaii, which is where this happens, has moved Friday night high school football to Saturday afternoons, which is, as far as I can tell, tantamount to child abuse. Apparently, this abuse consists of a) players getting overheated from playing in the sun and b) people's schedules getting out of whack because they can't attend junior's game because junior's sibling has soccer practice then or something.

And now there are actually people who are saying that "they chose the birds over our children," and someone who clearly has too much time on his or her hands made "Buck the firds" t-shirts in the various high school colors. Some folks even say they would refuse to help an injured or fallen bird because of this situation.

So I left a comment to the effect of: SERIOUSLY???

What's the argument here, exactly? That the survival of a species (or even, less dramatically, perhaps, just, you know, the lives of wild animals) should not be more important than rescheduling a non-academic extracurricular event? And why would this be?

Perhaps, people say, football is important even though it's non-academic, because it builds character. Just not of the kind of character that can adapt to a new situation, have consideration for any life but one's own, or deal with extreme discomfort (I'll give you that the sun in the afternoon is probably brutal). So we totally don't want to interfere with that kind of noble character-building.

Others protest that for some kids, football is the only way to college, and if they quit because the heat is too dangerous, they will have to sacrifice their educations. I guess they didn't notice that, er, COLLEGE GAMES ARE PLAYED ON SATURDAYS, and in places like, well, pretty much anywhere in the highly touted SEC (Alabama? Auburn? Louisiana?), it's probably going to be pretty dang hot.

I'm sure the article was written purely to provoke this kind of reaction, as its "unbiased" approach presented the parents' ideas as if they were reasonable and suggested that these poor kids should be the object of both pity and wonder, since they are sacrificing so much to be able to play a game. Which is annoying. If I want to be filled with a sense of indignance and awe that wow, people really believe this crap, I can watch Faux News. What the hell is the Liberal [airquotes] Gotcha Media for if it can't pander solely to my way of thinking?

And yes, I enjoy being self-righteously furious at other people's sense of self-righteousness.

And don't get me started on Palin's reaction to Juan Williams's being fired. Don't even get me started.

So tune in next time, for more arrogant condescention, because I gotta go now. I think The Daily Show is on.