Entitlement Culture

This SI.com story makes me want to scream:

NEW YORK (AP) -- The new interim president of the NAACP belittled baseball's efforts to boost black participation, chastising the sport in a letter Tuesday to commissioner Bud Selig.

Baseball announced an agreement last month with KPMG in which the company will give $1 million annually to MLB's Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program. Dennis Hayes called it "a small step."

"I hope that MLB will start listening to current and former African-American baseball players about their disappointment in the dwindling number of young blacks who are being coached and trained to enter the game that they love," Hayes wrote. "They believe, just like the NAACP believes, that if we don't do something now, African-American players will become extinct when it comes to Major League Baseball."

Can we please agree to stop demanding things from people who have no responsibility to meet those demands? MLB is not responsible for it's demographics, either on the field or in the stands. If they want to get involved in projects like the RBI program, that's fantastic, but for Hayes to blame them is ridiculous. Reminds me of another story I recently read:

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's not a health care crisis that worries Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, but America's health crisis.

"The best health care in the world is in America,'' the former Arkansas governor said during a visit to St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids on Monday. "People come to America to get health care.''

The problem is Americans' health, he said. Eighty percent of health care dollars go toward chronic disease -- most of it the result of overeating, too little exercise and smoking, he said.

Health in America, he said, is like an NFL football game … 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest being watched by 70,000 people in desperate need of exercise.

I'm with Huckabee. We seem to have exchanged our personal responsibility for a sense of entitlement. "I shouldn't have to stop eating fast food 10 times a week, the government should pay for my health care!" We cannot expect our government (or Major League Baseball) to fix our own problems. I understand that we all need help. No question about that. I can barely get through the day without help from others. But I have no illusions that anybody owes me any help.