Many studies have been done to determine the cause of “Hometown Cooking” in sports.  Hometown Cooking is the phenomenon that referees are impartial towards the home team when they officiate games.  The idea that an official would favor a team from an area that he literally lives close to or may have personal ties to is easy to understand.  Even if an official is not exactly crooked, he may be psychologically influenced, in the heat of making close calls, to tip his judgment in favor of the people and town he knows.  

This is more likely to happen at perhaps a High School level game, where officials are often picked right from the area.  But what do studies show when they do not consider High School sports or situations similar to what is described above? How might “Hometown Cooking” happen in a Professional Sports setting?  The referees of NFL games, for example, are thoroughly screened to ensure that they do not officiate games where they may have a personal bias toward one team or particular players.  They travel around the country and are sometimes shuffled around to avoid possible bias.  So then… why do many sports fans believe that referees rule slightly in favor of the home team?  Why does Las Vegas automatically spot the home team 3 points when determining the line for every NFL game?  What actually gives a team “home field advantage”?

Aside from the comfort players feel when playing in a place they are familiar with and the noise fans can generate to interfere with an opposing team’s communicaton, studies show that officiating slightly favors the home team, even at the professional level.  And it’s not necessarily because referees are corrupt, but because human referees can’t help themselves… they cue read from the crowd.

Imagine being an official on the sideline where the most notorious fans congregate.  In a hostile stadium.  Think Cleveland’s “Dawg Pound” or Oakland’s “Black Hole”.  It’s 3rd and 10 and the home team has the ball at the opponent’s 30 yard line with under a minute to play, down by a touchdown.  The quarterback goes back to pass, throws one over the middle, and the slot receiver fails to catch a contested ball.  But as he drops it, he puts a little body English on his attempt and lands awkwardly, possibly interfered with.  

As this event unfolds, what does the crowd do?  How do they react?  While you, the official, are judging what may have transpired in that split second, and you hesitatingly reach back toward your flag, the crowd screams, “PASS INTERFERENCE!!”  As an official who prides himself on being fair and impartial, you will not fold to such cues every time something like this occurs.  But the studies have shown that the results of how many flags are thrown is often determined by cues provided by the crowd.  There's a good chance that your hesitation and uncertainty is ultimately trumped by that little extra cue that you subconsciously read from the crowd.  "Maybe it was pass interference..." 

I think of these studies when considering the unfolding dynamic that has been deliberately manufactured over the leaked Roe v. Wade related Supreme Court decision.  And it's not just the Supreme Court who are being targeted to cue read, but several other parties are being tricked into cue reading and acting against their better judgment.  It’s a cue reading party, it's a circus, and it’s downright embarrassing.  


The Media is the Message


When color television sets quickly gained their permanent foothold in American living rooms and culture in the 60’s, Catholic philosopher Marshall McLuhan made a profound observation.  As Americans adjusted to possessing addictive boxes capable of displaying any colorized moving imagery into their sacred hearth, many wondered what the content of the television sitcoms, educational documentaries, and presidential debates might do to shape our civilization.  What an incredibly exhilarating and simultaneously terrifying frontier!  Those who were reasonably concerned hoped that such power would be used to inform, educate, and bring higher artistic culture to our society through this awesome medium.  Yes, many actually had that hope!

McLuhan was interested in a similar, but not so simple debate that really intrigued many of his intellectual contemporaries.  To trademark his observance of the real cultural changes the television brought, he quipped, “The media is the message”.  What did he mean by that?  He meant that the fact that the TV exists and is in everyone’s home impacts society more powerfully than any particular message that can be conveyed across the medium.  He meant that when the newsman came on at 6:00pm, the fact that he was on the TELEVISION (oh golly wow!) gave him authority.  The events that unfolded upon the screen were just a little more real, jarring, and important than had they been on the simple radio and not broadcast in motion across millions of households.  “Quiet children, the special music just came on and the perfect haired middle aged man in a suit jacket just shuffled his papers and said, ‘This is BREAKING NEWS!’!  I have a moral obligation as a good citizen to STAY INFORMED!”

That people could go to work and say, “Did you catch the news/game/show?” had a profoundly greater effect upon society than any particular news, game, or show.  Broadcasters quickly figured this out and used this maxim to generate viewership.  The biggest game of the year had to be called the “Super Bowl!”, the award shows became increasingly elaborate and practically liturgical, and the disaster of Vietnam became compounded by the fact that the war could be broadcast to millions in real time.  It’s presence on TV impacted positions that politicians, religious leaders, and social commentators would take all across the country.  Some ambitious young adults, catching on to this immense power, pursued careers in television journalism as a form of political activism.  

The Media is the Message.


Fast Forward: The “Debate” is the Message.

I propose that today a similar effect goes on in America, except the current watchword has been influenced by our ability to participate in social media.  Now a days "the debate” is the message.   Anytime a “national debate” about any topic materializes, those who control the media gain and can broker out power by controlling the way people cue read the situation.  “Oh dear.  Not only does the newsman say there is a ‘fierce national debate’ on gun control, but its been ‘trending’ ever since the last mass shooting.  Time to buy more guns before they all get banned!”.  


And Big Corporate Media has exercised this kind of control for approximately 60 years, though they blew most of their remaining credibility over Covid.  Even still, the Boomers have had a hard time breaking from this trance.  But it’s hard to blame them as they have been programmed by this kind of media manipulation since when it was literally becoming a thing.  When they were children!  They have been hypnotized by it for over 60 years.  We’ll give them a break.

But even the other generations act irrationally as they cue read from social media.  Especially Twitter. This is partially why the Left is so upset about Musk’s recent purchase.  How can they make “fierce national debates” occur overnight without their world narrative/world direction "Game Genie" always on?  

This has been going on for years now.  Remember in 2016 when you woke up one morning to be told that there was a fierce "national debate" about minimum wage?  From out of nowhere,   New York wanted to push minimum wage to $15 an hour and now the whole country was allegedly debating it.  Did you notice how many headlines simultaneously ran with the story, not about raising minimum wage per se, but that there was a national debate about minimum wage?  The media is the message and the debate is the message.  In order to push a higher minimum wage for the purposes of planned inflation, politicians and cronies in world banking, who network very well with those in control of major TV news and social media outlets, needed the message to be made loud and clear.  The message was not that the minimum wage should be raised, but that A NATIONAL DEBATE about minimum wage was raging.  

Thus it was the same about the “bathroom wars”.  Again, we remember not the content of the arguments made, but that there was a “war” over what bathrooms transsexuals should use.  And right here and now, it is happening again with the full blown and instantaneous “national debate about abortion” just fomented by the leaked Supreme Court document.

To What End?

The impact of an awareness, whether it is real or fabricated, of a “national debate” is much more profound that any argument made within that debate.  The arguments actually made in person, on Twitter, on Fox News, etc… none of them compare to what can be accomplished through the national consciousness that “a debate is going on”.  This consciousness itself is literally “the stuff” that everyone can hang their hat on when a Hegelian thesis takes hold and radical social change is initiated.  Or in this case, a radically bad decision is upheld and/or the filibuster is done away with to rush through legislation enshrining abortion as a nationally recognized right.  All one needs is an inflection point and the ability to make the “reality” of a debate a thing and within the consciousness of the masses.  

Picture this monologue from a Boomer watching a blaring Fox News show as the mid-term elections are again stolen in November: “Well, I was expecting a red wave to punish the democrats for the ineptness of Joe Biden, the soaring gas prices, the inability for any non home buyer to buy a decent home, the attempted forced vaccinations, the botched Afghanistan pull-out, crumbling border security, etc… but I guess the senate staying split at 50/50 and the house republicans gaining only a few more seats shouldn’t be too surprising since that ‘national debate on abortion’ started in May.  Boy, that leaked document really ‘fired up’ those Leftists and made an impact!  But wait til next time!  People are waking up!”

And thus enough people accept the lies and the ever diminishing standard of living in the US.  They cue read that a "national debate" explains how the Leftists built the momentum needed to stave off utter defeat.

The television sets and the social media “now Trending” ticker show you that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of Leftist kids who have cue read their way onto the streets to engage in the “national debate” on Roe v. Wade.  Let's be honest, the pro-abortion cause has never been posessed by the Milennials or Zoomers.  Yet, there they are with bellies painted “my body my choice!” while waving around coat hangers.  If American youth have ever offered a half sincere “debate” about abortion, it was back in the 70’s.  It was before so many women had experienced the regret of abortion, before it became even more obvious that abortion is baby murder (intra-uterine photography sure is spectacular), and before birth control (including the abortion pill) become easier to acquire than Sudafed.  The reason that the Tik-Tok/Twitter warrior, purple haired Leftists are out there “debating” is because they all cue read that this is the part they are supposed to play in this.  Just as so many “centrist” kids got snookered into chanting “Black Lives Matter” before retweeting “Black Trans Lives Matter!” only three days later in 2020.   

The hope of the Communists (the elite overworld bad actors) is that the Marxists (the useful idiot woke footsoldiers) will go out there and essentially do some rhetorical pro-wrestling for them.  And the Right is actually pretty  entertaining when clapping back in this rhetorical pro-wrestling.    As they say, “the Left can’t meme!”  In fact, as far as the content and showmanship is concerned, the Right usually comes out like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Stone Cold Steve Austin rolled into one, while the Left poses as that annoying, effeminate, skinny, America hating jobber with a gimmick.  "No way he’s gonna win. This should be entertaining."  And it is.  

There is a reason the Conservative Hot Take Industrial Complex has become the monster it is.  Millions  of people subscribe to Right Wing podcasts because the content is entertaining and insightful, while Leftist content is only allowed to insanely, mechanically, and soullessly serve the bad actor overlords.  Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Tucker… yeah, they know how to deliver the goods! Kudos.  But if we step back and observe this Complex, maybe we should rethink our engagement in “the debate”.   Or at least check our temperance when engaging.

“Look at that tweet from Candice Owens… from the top rope!”.  Ding ding ding.  

Perhaps we can do better.


Which is?

Personally, I don’t have time to engage on Twitter.  At all.  In fact, the anxiety over being part of something that feels as fake and unsubstantial as pro-wrestling is why I reject advice from others that I share my writing on sub-stacks.  Maybe I can be pursuaded otherwise, but as things stand now, who really has time to engage in these specious “debates”?  Flame wars for hours on end with hundreds of people, who's sincerity you will never ultimately know, many of whom are actually bots or  hired out hacks from troll farms?  No thanks.

Our respective kids demand a lot of our time!  Don't they?  Who can afford to be the guy who takes his kids to the park and sits on his cell phone, responding to all the tweets?  Are you willing to pay that kind of price in order to participate in “the national debate”?  We only have so much time to shape our kids into God fearing, freedom loving, hard-working, essential skill possessing, mortal sin resisting, real men and women who will accept no future less than one in which they actually get to own property, have their own big family, have the sacraments, and live in a home bigger than 400 square feet.  Is  full engagement in "the debate" going to be enough to actually resist a world where our kids will have to scan a microchip on their phone and check in with the central office of the North American UN division of the One World Government in order to go out of their tiny homes? I only have so much time to show my kids what it means to truly live as a free man: being willing to sacrifice all the distractions of the world and break one’s back working to preserve that freedom.

Freedom is not the ability to sit in an air conditioned room eating one of the 25 flavors of Oreos while being able to “trigger” some woke snowflakes.  Perhaps you actually post the most sincere and insightful messages possible to enlighten the pagans on social media, but if you sit there and do it from your Android (Google) phone while your kids zone out on their Xbox 5, then I will be bold enough to challenge you to do better.  And if there is some blindspot you can help me with to understand where I am refusing to wake up from the matrix, I appreciate you returning the fraternal correction!  

At the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter if we “win” the "debate" in the big Twitter ring.  The whole thing is rigged/fake and the point of it is to line the pockets of and to grant power to Flunky type men who laugh all the way to the bank and shout “suckers” as a few dollar bills fly out the windows of their electric Maseratis.  

The "debate" is the message.  And it's not worth it.

Then do what?  Sit back and do nothing??

No.  By refusing to walk into the trap of “the national debate”, you can use your freed up time to do some substantial things that are within your control  Things to help you to fight the good fight.  If you are worried about what energy the Left has manufactured by this leak, then go out there and gather signatures to get your real favorite conservatives on the ballot for the upcoming primary.  Find the school board member in your community who resists all “comprehensive sex education” and planned parenthood funding that could Californionize your state into one where kids are taught to hate their sexual organs and to have abortions that mommy and daddy won't know about.  Find the next rosary rally outside of an abortion clinic and join.  Volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center.  Fire up a diaper drive at your kid’s private school or your parish to take to the nearest women’s care center.  Heck, find the name of the director of your local women’s care center and send her a nice thank you card for what she is doing.  

All of these options are better than merely “staying informed” by the media and throwing down body slams in the “national debate”.  Of course, get the temperate amount of news you actually need to improve yourself and your family's position going forward.  Get the info necessary to help make you a saint.

Because while the contrived and ever distracting “debate” rages on, the fight between good and evil never ceases.  If you are a good, free willed, and free thinking man, we need you.  

God bless,

Gadfly