Please, spare us the psycho-social interpretation of one very angry guy pummelling another very angry guy to death at a suburban hockey rink. A jury will decide whether the beating constituted manslaughter or self-defense. The rest of us will have to decide whether the fight between two enraged hockey dads becomes Exhibit A in yet another manufactured social ill. We make a grand pretense in this country of wanting to understand the nature of violence, but when confronted with its ugly consequences we round out the sharp edges and slap the name of a silly syndrome on it.
Violence blame it on the lack of open roads, on-time airlines, and openings on the varsity squad.
It is so easy to be seduced by the ample anecdotal evidence. It's true that too many parents have never learned the fundamentals of sportsmanship, that too many drivers forget that they are steering a potentially fatal weapon, that too many self-absorbed airline passengers let their anger jeopardize the safety of their crew and fellow travelers. But the harm in ascribing an individual's bad behavior to a passing social phenomenon is that it diverts responsibility from where it lies with the perpetrator and the culture that created him. They each had run-ins with police, both as juveniles and as adults. Costin was only a teenager when his father was convicted of manslaughter for the stabbing death of Costin's older brother.