The following article is from the April issue of Townhall Magazine. To subscribe to twelve issues of Townhall Magazine and receive a free copy of Andrew McCarthy’s Willful Blindness: A Memoir of a Jihad, click here.
When the champions of the comeback season of “American Gladiators” won their titles, there were no touchdown dances, trash talkers, or T.O. temper tantrums in the Gladiator Arena—the strobe-lit home of the muscled, tanned forbears of today’s reality TV.
Instead, 32-year-old Monica Carlson hugged her twin daughters while her husband beamed, “I couldn’t be more proud,” said Chad. “It’s a great, special moment for her and for our family.”
Evan Dollard, the 25-year-old male champion, dedicated the win to his mom. “I wanted this to be a special moment for my family, my friends, everybody watching at home—Especially for my mom,” who died of cancer before he started the competition. “I love her. I was doing that for her,” he said.
The runners-up—one a teacher and coach, the other a fitness trainer, both of whom work with teenagers—congratulated the winners and thanked their families for support.
NBC’s re-launch of the cult classic competition show (original run: 1989-1996) may have been an attempt to wring a dribble of new entertainment from the writers’ strike drought, but the success of the show and those who competed is refreshing.
These days, the beauty of tough, fair, red-white-and-occasionally-black-and blue competition is easily lost on all the societal hand-wringing about its side-effects.
Children are either taught that competition should be avoided at all costs (Anyone for non-competitive Field Day or Cooperative Self-Esteem Raising?), or trounced at all costs (What’s the line on the little-league sideline fight between Jimmy’s and Tommy’s dads this weekend?).
They’re taught, by turns, to fight for nothing (Violence is never the answer.) and to fight over everything (Did you just scuff my Pumas?).
“American Gladiators,” perhaps improbably, offered a picture of healthy, basic physical competition adding meaning, fun and opportunity to the lives of ordinary people. Well, ordinary people who are asked to dodge giant medicine balls, 100-mph cannonlaunched tennis balls, and impossibly large Gladiators, all a couple stories above a swimming pool, which is occasionally lit afire.
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