The other day an e-mail from the National Organization for Women crossed my desk. The e-mail was outraged that Washington, DC, had granted Mike Tyson a license to fight and called for people to protest to city officials to have Tyson’s permission to fight revoked. Huh? Let Tyson fight already.
The NOW e-mail complained that Tyson was being investigated for rape. Fine, then lets see police arrest and/or indict him, but until then Tyson has just as much right as anybody to pursue his career and applying political criteria to decide whether or not to allow him to fight is obscene.
As George Getz puts it in a Libertarian Party press release on the Tyson controversy,
If Tyson is willing to fight; if an opponent is willing to step into the ring with him; if the bout is sanctioned by professional boxing organizations; and if fans are willing to pay money to see the fight — then no meddlesome government bureaucrat should have the power to veto it.
Exactly. I was trying to figure out what NOW was thinking with its idiotic e-mail. You’d think a group of feminists would be the last people in the world wanting to blacklist someone from working at his profession simply because he is unpopular or has a criminal record. As Getz said in the LP press release, “We don’t need Soviet-style economic commissars deciding who can work, and where they can work, and under what conditions they can work.”
Boxing commissions should be required by law to render fight decisions based solely on objective criteria as Getz outlines, not based on who NOW or other groups like or dislike. Let Tyson fight already.
Source:
Let Mike Tyson box in Washington: It’s a matter of economic freedom. Libertarian Party, Press Release, February 21, 2002.