There are many games played in our country, and spectators can really get caught up in them. And even though there are scandals galore throughout the sports industry, at least there are rules. And that may be why so many of us prefer football to politics.

In football, things are fairly clear cut. There are penalties for certain infractions and instant replay to determine whether or not the referees got it right.

There’s no way to change the outcome of a game. Either the team gets the first down or they don’t. If they make a touchdown, they get points.

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The team with the most points wins the game at the end.

There are time limits in each quarter.

When the clock runs out, unless there’s a tie, the game is over.

No quarterback can say the pass was completed if we can all see it was incomplete.

You can see how a play is carried out. You can’t lie about statistics, and the truth about the game is out there for all to see.

Have you ever seen a coach say the team won the championship when in reality the team did not?

Of course not.

But in the game of politics, there are no rules. In this country, if you run for president you can make any claim you like about what you’re going to do, and there’s no gong sounded to alert the public when you lie.

You can assassinate the character of your opponent, and anything goes.

You can promise to enact change without mentioning that the president is the head of the executive branch, not the legislative branch.

In order to win an election, you have to tell people what you or your staff determine they want to hear. Then you campaign on that issue. If people are concerned about rattlesnakes invading their homes, you must promise that if you are elected you will see to it that all rattlesnakes in America are eliminated.

You don’t have to explain how this can be done. That’s not important. You just have to say you will do it. You have to convince people that the elimination of rattlesnakes will improve the economy, education, health and the overall standing of the United States to the rest of the world.

A campaign is basically an attempt to carry out mass brainwashing. It’s not as hard to do as some may believe.

History has shown us over and over again how little it takes to accomplish this.

Hitler did it. He convinced a nation that all their problems were the fault of one group of people and told them they would prosper if only the country was rid of the Jewish population.

Senator Joseph McCarthy did it through his witch hunt for communists in America.

Successful cult leaders have the ability to do it.

Right now there’s too much dust blowing around to see what’s really happening. So I think it’s best for me to wait until next November to check back in on whoever is left standing to try to pick a candidate.

As we’ve seen in the past, the savior of today may be in prison tomorrow. It’s the American way.

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Jay Bender

S.C. Press Association

I confess. I had more fun responding to inquiries about Mike Pitts’ (R-Laurens) journalist registration bill than I have had answering questions about any other proposed restrictions on the press or personal freedoms.

A client called and asked what the response to the bill should be. I responded, “laughter.” The client then asked, “What do we say when someone wants our official response?” “Tell them when we quit laughing we’ll think of something.”

Unfortunately many news organizations groaned and harrumphed like the sea lions on the beach in front of William Randolph Hearst’s castle in California. A reaction I suspect Pitts desired.

If he were honest, and I have no way of knowing, Pitts would have known that his bill had very little chance of getting even subcommittee consideration and no chance of passage.

Of course Pitts’ explanation for filing the bill was as humorous as the bill itself: unhappiness with press coverage of firearms legislation.

If Pitts really had a complaint about news coverage of firearms legislation, as distinguished from editorial and opinion treatment of the issue, he could have responded on the merits of specific proposals. With respect to editorials and opinion pieces, I am confident most newspapers would have welcomed a piece from Pitts addressing specific legislative proposals regarding such things as closing the “gun show loophole” where one can buy a firearm without a background check, or methods to get mental health information into the background check data bases.

But, because he is a member of the General Assembly, with lawyers and typists at his disposal at state expense, Pitts decided to demonstrate what a big shot he is. He used public resources to take the language of the state’s concealed weapons law and modify it to require the registration of journalists. I am guessing that if Pitts had been required to draft the bill himself rather than use the professional staff, he might have decided it would be a better use of his time to take a hunting trip to Alaska (which he has done apparently using his campaign treasury to finance the trip).

Some have suggested that Pitts’ registration bill has less to do with his unhappiness with firearms legislation coverage and more to do with The Post & Courier report on his use of campaign funds to underwrite hunting trips.

Pitts is not alone in promoting legislation to burden the press for fulfilling the role of the press in our democratic society. Every year someone in the General Assembly proposes to remove the sales tax exemption on newspapers and newsprint — exemptions that have been in the law since South Carolina’s initial sales tax legislation was adopted. And a historical note, the imposition of a tax on newspapers and newspaper readers by the Crown was one of the rallying points for colonists in the days leading to the American Revolution. The exemption repeal usually pops up after a newspaper has disclosed questionable or illegal conduct by a public official.

Louisiana and Minnesota both enacted tax schemes that imposed taxes on the largest newspapers in those states — the papers most likely to write about governmental corruption. The Louisiana legislature didn’t even try to hide the fact that the tax was being imposed on those newspapers critical of Huey Long. The United States Supreme Court ruled both schemes unconstitutional.

Minnesota also had a statute that allowed a court to issue an injunction to stop the publication of a newspaper deemed to be a “nuisance” on the basis of what it published about government and government officials. The concept of nuisance in common law allows a court to enjoin an activity when noise, odors or light from an activity on one person’s property interferes with the use of an adjoining property. Minnesota, like Pitts, was trying to be clever in taking law that dealt with one subject and modify it to enable a court to punish a newspaper for publishing that which a public official found offensive.

This is not a new notion. During the administration of John Adams, Congress enacted a Sedition Act to allow the imprisonment of publishers who criticized government and government officials. The notion of sedition was imported from England where one could be put to death in a gruesome fashion for criticizing the monarch. Those punished under the act were supporters of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson became President he pardoned those who had been imprisoned and the law expired.

Certainly Pitts was throwing his weight around and acting the bully with his pretend (I hope) legislation, but he is to be applauded for causing us to think about why we have the First Amendment. I tell my classes that the First Amendment exists to protect from the government speech that nobody likes. Even if the nobody is in the General Assembly.

Jay Bender is the Reid H. Montgomery Professor of Journalism at the University of South Carolina. He also represents South Carolina Press Association as its attorney.

The other four-letter word

Dear Editor,

Although it is very small, with only four letters total, it is very powerful just the same. It can lift your soul from the depths of Hell and put it on the mountaintops of Heaven.

So powerful that if it’s the true kind, Satan and all the demons of Hell can’t destroy it. It can also do just the opposite. Many graveyards are full of those who encountered the wrong kind.

Some have given their lives for it or taken others’ lives because of it. In the right hands, it calms the most violent of souls, but in the wrong it can enrage the most timid and bring on great destruction.

It can make a complete fool out of even the most learned or wise. More songs, poems, stories and books have been composed, written or told about it through all of history than anything.

It has brought down kings and queens and many a politician.

Be very careful if you encounter it, for as with fire, you may get burned, and as with life, there are no guarantees. Pray if you find it, and few are they that do, that it is the true kind.

The one kind that can bring more happiness than great riches or worldly fame. Only four letters — this the other four-letter word — so small yet powerful just the same.

Yes, a word spelled simply, L-O-V- E.

Something to think about in this month associated with love. Better yet, think on it all year long and be careful, be very careful, who you fall in love with, for not all love stories end with happily ever after as in the fairy tales.

Eddie Boggs

Westminster