THE MORNING ACCORDING TO US

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And then they all talked about their feelings and went home feeling better. The end.

Earlier this week a West Virginia man, one Jose Cruz, passed gas on a cop and was charged with battery. Whether or not Jose realized it, he did his community a service. The good people of South Charleston, WV, will never forget the time a a drunk guy named Jose assaulted an officer with nothing more than the wind from his pants.

Does violence get a bad rap? If it weren't for violence, the years 1861 to 1865 would be as forgettable as, oh, the roughly forty years that followed; the 1968 Democratic National Convention would be as limpid as the 1984 DNC; and Kimbo Slice could have never been a star. Maybe there needs to be more violence in society, particularly in sports. With so many new champions anointed in any sports calendar, it all melds and then slowly fades away. Violence in sport is a way to punctuate the passing of time. Take the Pistons-Pacers brawl. That happened four years ago and it's still the most talked about regular-season NBA game ever. Twenty years from now, we'll have a vague recollection of Tim Duncan's fundamentally sound play on the block. But when we think of basketball at the turn of the century, we'll think of crazy Ron Artest punching out that fat schlub of a Pistons fan.

The problem so many people have with violence in sports—from Miami Hurricanes brawling to Tony Stewart slapping and pushing an officiating crew—is that violence muddies the concept of sport as a metaphor for life, of hard work and fair play always prevailing. These people need to be more inclusive. Violence in sports is absolutely a metaphor for life. The Columbian soccer player punching an opposing coach last week, which set off a riot, speaks to the human condition just as much as a South African man with no legs trying to make it as an Olympic sprinter. We say it's time for more athletes (and sports fans for that matter) to, figuratively speaking, or perhaps literally, go find someone to fart on. You just might make history.

Elsewhere in the world…

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Surf wars! It's the experienced versus the amateur, for the right to good waves.

High school football is a great American pastime. Of course, when it's dominated by a menacing herd of fire ants, your opinion tends to change.

"Hey Mom, I'll score a goal if you put down your gun."

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