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" It is possible to be a reformed alcoholic, a reformed dumbass, a reformed Scientologist. But is it possible to be a reformed asshole? It&amp;#039;s finally becoming totally unacceptable to be an unrepentant asshole in America. Richie Incognito found that out this week, when years of being one of the world&amp;#039;s worst people finally culminated in a racial slur, as it tends to happen. He&amp;#039;s been suspended by the Dolphins, even though he kept getting kicked off of teams for this kind of thing for years. He was named the NFL&amp;#039;s dirtiest player in a player poll in 2009. He was booted off the Rams because he couldn&amp;#039;t stop headbutting people. As a Freshman at Nebraska, he bullied a walk-on so mercilessly he left the team. (Feel free to disregard this placard in Incognito&amp;#039;s locker, then.)   Oh, but he has reformed! This is the bullshit he was spinning to Jeff Darlington just two months ago on NFL.com: &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t realize that the battle was within me. It was a lot easier to blame everybody else. And it was a lot easier to be mad at everybody else and not be mad at myself,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Now, there&amp;#039;s a method to the madness. In the old days, it was just madness.&amp;quot; Darlington outlines a reborn Incognito, no joke, &amp;quot;sipp[ing] an Arpeggio-flavored Nespresso while the soft, orchestral sounds of Lana Del Rey filled the background.&amp;quot; Then he went and left a voicemail for Jonathan Martin that would make a serial killer sound adorable. It&amp;#039;s systemic. We let the guy be an asshole for too long. We let assholes exist for too long. Now we have a superbreed of assholes in a society that realizes there is nothing but misery to be derived from them. Look, all of this is coming from a website that wrote an article called &amp;quot;In Defense of Coaches Who Yell&amp;quot;, by the way. But that appeared to be a reaction to those kindergarten soccer games where they&amp;#039;re not allowed to keep score. Usually, when a coach yelled -- at you or, especially, those around you -- you didn&amp;#039;t think, &amp;quot;Oh, jeez, maybe I should fix what I&amp;#039;m doing wrong!&amp;quot; You thought, &amp;quot;This man&amp;#039;s dad had a belt that he used for non-belt purposes, and no one is ever going to live it down.&amp;quot; And then you&amp;#039;d miss that layup or drop that pass, maybe on purpose, because fk that guy, right? The world is not your parade to extract revenge one-by-one for every slight, bad stretch of time, shitty person encountered, perceived injustice, or probably wrong biases against sets of people. It is a place where you must coexist amongst a bunch of people, every day, like it or not. Do not forget how this story was initially treated, by the way. Jonathan Martin, the subject of Incognito&amp;#039;s random and in-hindsight creepy scorn, left the Dolphins last week. Reports from the Dolphins say he left the team because he had been &amp;quot;bullied.&amp;quot; Let&amp;#039;s get rid of that word. &amp;quot;Bullies&amp;quot; make you think of Biff from &amp;quot;Back to the Future&amp;quot; or Macauley Culkin&amp;#039;s tarantula cousin from &amp;quot;Home Alone.&amp;quot; You think dumb, all-talk fat kids with nothing left to lose. You think of oafs who&amp;#039;ve had a hard time -- ones you&amp;#039;ll avoid until they come around because they just missed out on being loved somewhere down the line. Richie Incognito is not a bully. He&amp;#039;s an asshole. Bullies are assholes. It&amp;#039;s time we start calling them that. Maybe they&amp;#039;ll stop acting like assholes if they know that&amp;#039;s what they are. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a32766/incognito-bullying/>