Hey Sean Avery - You Are The Sloppy Second!

Wow, I wonder what Brett Hull is thinking right now? I mean, he paid for $15.5 million for a guy who is tied for 210th place in NHL scoring. The Stars are eating up almost $4 million in salary cap space a year for a player who is on pace for 10 goals this season and spends more time firing his mouth off than putting the puck in the net. The guy in question is Dallas Stars’ Sean Avery. Avery demonstrated this week that there is no bottom too low for a guy to stoop. In an apparent off the cuff interview that was pre-meditated and badly staged, Avery slammed his ex-girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert and her new beau displaying his true essence and how he views the world. To Sean Avery, the world is his for the taking, his to manipulate and his to run amok. Narcissistic at best, sociopathic at worst, Avery believes that you and I and most everyone else are beneath him.

Let’s be real here. Avery’s antics on the whole are not steeped in macho bravado and neither are they born from a post-Jackass or Punk’d root; they’re not even meant to entertain. Avery is in this for himself and for his own amusement. He thinks he’s funny.

And this is the truest sign of his character. A true narcissist, unlike the common misunderstanding of the word is not in love with himself – he despises, even hates himself often beyond measure. The narcissist’s focus on his life, his world and everything about himself may, on the surface, look like admiration yet it is really the way in which the individual creates and maintains their own hyper-critical radar screen. And they don’t like much of what they see.

I’ve been tagged many times for being over analytical, and yet, I think this time, with Sean Avery it’s merited. Because you see the only reason Sean Avery is able to function at this level of immaturity in the world is because other men have allowed it to happen.

That’s right. We’re complicit in how this guy and every other boy walking around in a man’s body acts and is permitted to dysfunction in our society. Our apathy, or lack of courage in confronting the Sean Averys of the world becomes the fuel for their continued assault on our values and principles; not only as a society but more importantly as men.

How is a guy like Sean Avery permitted to shoot his mouth off and behave like a reckless, irresponsible, pissed off teenager and have no one really stand up to him? I think it’s because most men while publicly condemning Avery secretly condone his anti-authority, anti-convention stance because it mirrors their own desire to flip a finger at the man and his rules. We like rebels because they speak to our own inner rebellion. Our only caveat is that they not go too far. You know, it’s okay to tell a few off-colour or sexist jokes, perhaps even treat other races or women as second class citizens but you better not offend me, my mother or my sister.

Nice double standard.

The world is at a turning point gentlemen and what we have now is going to be radically different a decade from now. Boys like Sean Avery will have no place in the new ways of the world because they will have lost the plot having never fully matured. Our world needs men not whiny, smug, righteously indignant punks.