No, Bill Maher isn’t a professional athlete, but that’s my favorite graphic of a celebrity middle finger. Besides, it reveals Bill’s essential ugliness.
Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran talked about his 2022 suicide attempt in a Netflix docuseries about the Red Sox released last year. He received a lot of praise for his openness, which he said was intended to increase awareness among others struggling with depression and mental health issues.
But jerks reign supreme, especially in sporting event crowds. Last night, as the Sox played the Twins at Target Field in Minneapolis, a Twins fan sitting in field box seats shouted at Duran that he should kill himself after he grounded out in the fifth inning.
The player responded with the obscene middle finger gesture. “I shouldn’t react like that,” Duran said after the game. “That kind of stuff is still kind of triggering. It happens.“
Flipping off a fan during a game is typically an automatic suspension and fine. Should it be in this case?
Ethics Alarms 
There is so much bad behavior anymore that I’m starting to think that we need a period of zero tolerance on a lot of bad public behavior like this to right the ship, and I say that a person who loves ribbing friends with profanity and middle fingers. I don’t want that kind of behavior in public with strangers though.
As a sports fan, smack talk is kind of part of the whole thing. “You suck” is much different than “Go kill yourself.” People used to have a sense of proportion.
Random teenagers doing “takeovers.” Department stores now having to lock up basic products. Bad parents are making our society a fundamentally worse place by not teaching their kids better than this.
I really try to be a compassionate person, and I don’t believe in throwing the book at any of these people, but something has to change in this country.