Roethlisberger: "He was raised with old-fashioned, middle-America values."

All due respect to Denver Post columnist Mike Klis -- who opined yesterday that Ben Roethlisberger's issues with women might stem from never having coped with the fact that his mother died in an automobile accident when he was eight years old -- but near the end of the piece, he uses this phrase you see in the subject to describe why it's so sad Ben "All my bitches, take shots!" Roethlisberger strayed from his values and became such a creep.

I'm sorry, but maybe someone can clear this up for me.

Do they teach classes in rape in the coastal states that I'm unaware of?

Can one get a degree in false imprisonment from NYU or USC?

Which states in coastal America are hotbeds for anti-American values, the kind of places that eschew old fashion values in favor of new age ones that teach you to get busy raping the minute you become a man?

Does anyone mind if we put to bed the stupid meme about middle-American values, at least in sports writing? Or at least as it relates to NFL players? I'm pretty sure they have date rape in Ohio too, and the don't teach you that it's ok in California or Jersey.

 

Well said.
"Raised in the Bible Belt" would be the Southern equivalent of "Midwestern values."
Either way, the cliched references have got to go.

 

I don't know where this first began but it's been a scourge for a long time.

Cardinals fans didn't even think they were the best in the land until Fox Sports and other outlets reinforced to them that they indisputably are. I would suggest its basest origins are in some sort of regional jealousy of both coasts, but I don't think it's that simple.

I am not from the heartland and have not raped a woman, but I guess I've always been a bit of an underachiever.

 

Argh.

 

What irks me even more in this situation -- in addition to the dumb cliche -- is that as long as we're relating "Middle America" values to "respect for women," let's point out that middle America hasn't exactly been particularly progressive about equal opportunities for women in terms of careers, education, independence, etc. So I don't exactly get how growing up in Ohio as opposed to, say, Seattle, was going to give Roethlisberger the idea that women should be treated with respect and were not objects to do with whatever he pleased.

 

Weird shit happens in the "heartlands". Maybe it is all the Crystal meth labs.

 

I'm convinced that losers like R-berger come from all parts of the country, and their place of origin is insignificant.

What I do think is sigtnificant in this case is the sense of entitlement and nonaccountability for this sort of thing that many pro athletes possess. I really don't think we need Dr. Freud or a grad-school sociologist to figure this one out.

 

That column is dumb.

 

This forced ideology has had terrible ramifications on our political landscape.

You can't swing a cat anymore without hitting some douchebag who claims his values are more exalted and his worldview sharper than you and yours by virtue of his having grown up in the midwestern U.S.

The thinking is as lazy and aggravating as Southerners who think they have a primal stakeholding in football. You live in and experience enough areas of the country (as most newspaperpeople do), and you see enough Southern Hospitality in Buffalo and Midwestern Values in El Paso and California Free Thinking in Charlotte.

 

I think Roethlisberger is closer to Manson family values than the stereotype of Middle America values.

 

Honestly, the premise of the column is a little faulty in general. We have an author and psychologist who has not treated, or presumably even spoken with, Roethlisberger, but nonetheless feels comfortable diagnosing him with having never dealt with mommy issues. My wife reads US Weekly, and even in that when they quote a dime store psychiatrist attempt to tell us what's wrong with Brittney Spears, they have the decency to always include a sentence that says "Dr. Blah Blah, who has not treated Ms. Spears,..."

I kept waiting for that line, only to forget about it when I bumped into the idea that growing up a 14-hour drive from the ocean means you're taught: apple pie good, rape bad.

 

It's not a degree-program. It's just a certificate. Which is good. That means you can take all your "Faking DNA 305" class pass/fail.