Good news, everyone, good news coming from North Carolina specifically.
Apparently the government there has solved all of the problems their residents
are facing, their lives have been made whole,
their material conditions have improved.
They don't have to worry about poverty, or
financial instability, or any of that because now the Republican
lawmakers in that state have focused on really important stuff,
important matters like banning participation trophies for children.
The idea that this would even be on the minds of any lawmaker in any state really
does boggle my mind because of course,
North Carolina's economic conditions are not great.
There are a lot of people struggling in that state, but nonetheless, this
is the policy that Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have decided to champion.
Let's get to the details.
The GOP-backed bill would bar local government-operated youth sports or
recreation groups from giving awards for
participants based solely on their participation and
restricts awards to those based on identified performance achievements.
So you only get a trophy if you won the game, or if you're the MVP,
whatever, right, something very specific.
Now, the bill is sponsored by North Carolina State Senators,
Timothy Moffitt, Eddie Suttle, and Bobby Hanig.
In fact, Bobby Hanig told a local news outlet this, it's past the sports.
What we're not teaching our children is to be prepared for
life, be prepared for failure.
I mean, he might know a thing or two about failure.
When kids are growing up, they're being taught, it's okay to just be OK.
You don't have to be the best.
As someone who opines on sporting events and athletics,
I'm sure you have strong feelings about this.
Participation trophies for children, just serious stuff, really serious stuff.
>> Look, here's the funny thing about it.
I actually I'm opposed to participation trophies [LAUGH].
I actually do think there's something to winners and
losers and setting goals and setting out to achieve them and
being able to sort of have a yard marker for your goals.
It's like, I wanted to make the team, I made it.
Next year I wanna start, we wanna win, or we wanna win this many games or whatever.
It's good to have a metric for goals [LAUGH].
>> By the way, I agree with you on that.
Okay, I was a student not too long ago, right?
I'm in my mid thirties now pushing 40, I get it, I get it.
But I remember what it was like to be a kid.
And if everyone in the class or if everyone in my dance troupe or
whatever it is, if we all got the same thanks for participating award,
we would all know that it's like nothing to write home about.
[LAUGH] kids aren't stupid.
So what's really going on here, right?
Is there something happening where there aren't specific
awards given to people who are students who really excel?
Is everyone just getting the same award no matter what?
What's really going on?
>> No, I think this is part of the save the children narrative.
Anytime something has to do with the kids,
we have to pretend that they're in this insanely grave peril where
kids can't even kick a ball on their freaking streets anymore.
I think this is part of that culture and more importantly, Ana,
this is what counts for mass politics now, okay?
There is nothing you can do democratically, no matter who you
vote for, who you get in office, nothing is going to change for
you and your loved ones except for something like this.
And that's what I think this is emblematic of,
even politically nothing's gonna change.
Doesn't matter who you vote in there,
nothing is gonna change because the powers that be are broadly aligned on
the important issues and they don't include making your life better.
So when they can feign something like look at how I'm improving the life
of little Johnny by depriving him and his cohort of participation trophies.
Of course, they're gonna, you know what I mean, play trumpets for this kind of crap.
They're not doing anything else.
They're not [LAUGH].
>> That's so true.
I mean, look, that's exactly right.
That's really the only valuable point to this story, or valuable analysis, right?
They're just distracting with this nonsense, okay?
Because fact of the matter is the biggest problems in society don't root,
the root isn't participation trophies for children.
But I gotta get to this one other quote cuz I thought it was hilarious
because there's this guy named Dominique Brewer.
He oversees a footage, is it footage program?
I don't know what a footage program is, but nonetheless,
a footage program for children ages five to 13.
I'm gonna guess that's football program.
Maybe it's a typo, anyway, it doesn't matter.
Dominique Brewer was asked for comment for this story and Brewer said that he was for
certificates that acknowledge the child has competed in the league but
said it was not acknowledging their participation.
Okay, so what?
I played in softball when I was in high school.
Not because I like softball, not because I wanted to play softball,
but because I thought, the one thing that's really missing from
my college applications is a sport because I don't like sports,
I don't play sports, I don't even wanna watch sports, right, that's just not me.
No offense was, no offense.
>> Hey, listen, I completely love that for you.
>> Thank you.
I love it for me too.
>> It's a lot more stressful and time consuming than is necessary to be honest.
So you're lucky to be free from the shackles of caring.
>> If there's one thing I wanna be known for, it's being free of stress [LAUGH].
But anyway, no, I did it, I participated in it to get
the participation trophy for my college admissions, right?
I didn't excel at all.
In fact, I wasn't allowed to play a single game because of how bad I was.
I was benched the entire season, and I didn't complain about it, I loved it.
But I still participated, I went to every practice.
I ran from the ball as it was barreling toward my face because
I was terrified of it.
Did that make me a bad person that I got that?
>> No, and I think what they're trying to acknowledge
Ana is something like a varsity jacket is a participation trophy.
It's a way to signify to everybody I played on this team.
Not necessarily that we won anything significant or
that we were exceptional or whatever.
No, I get to wear this jacket because I participated in this sport.
That's a participation trophy,
and they recognized that we should have these type of things.
It's just they slowly realized, what are we doing here?
We can't just eliminate [LAUGH] any recognition
at all that somebody played in a game or
a sport just because they didn't necessarily win.
Even that's just them acknowledging the flaws in their absurd argument.
>> Listen, I'm all in favor of doing away with participation trophies as
long as we do so with lawmakers as well.
You don't get a participation trophy, including the title of representative or
senator if you're actually doing nothing.
You're taking recess incessantly, you're spending all your time fundraising.
You're not actually writing or passing legislation.
I wanna do away with those participation trophies.
And then we're having a conversation.
And then finally, to your point and it's a really important point to drive home was
the state of North Carolina is not doing well based on various metrics, okay?
And the fact that these Republican lawmakers in that state are focusing on
this issue tells you everything you need to know.
They are deflecting and they are distracting from their failure to
represent the best interests of the people in North Carolina.
A recent study by Wallet Hub, for instance, ranked all 50 states across
51 key indicators to determine the best states to raise a family.
And North Carolina was ranked 39th out of 50
states with a total score of 43.11.
North Carolina also ranks 30th in the country for health care, but hey,
no time to address that they have important matters like banning
participation trophies for literal children.
So the bill to ban participation trophies has yet to be voted on.
It needs to pass both chambers of the general assembly and
will be signed by Governor Roy Cooper in order to become law.
None of that has happened yet.
We'll see how it plays out.
But my guess is no one, including the very lawmakers who wrote this legislation,
genuinely care about it,
genuinely see this as a big issue that needs to be legislated against.
I think again, that this is just a distraction.
They should be bigger fish here.
>> And this same North Carolina legislator, which by the way,
we used to think of North Carolina as the good Carolina.
I don't know that we have any good Carolinas anymore.
These guys were on the cutting edge of the trans stuff where they were
trying to ban trans people from bathrooms and
trans kids from participating in certain school activities.
So it's not surprising that they go culture war immediately instead of
actually dealing with the failures of the state's government to serve its people.
We gotta look back at the recent history as well and
know that this is what they've been doing up there for a few years now.