(I can't get no) Satisfaction

By DAVID GREEN

Forty-two years after the release of The Rolling Stones' most iconic tune, Mick Jagger's lament seems to be more apropos than ever. "Satisfaction"? You'll find it in the dictionary, but not in too many other places.

Obviously Bruton Smith wasn't satisfied with his Las Vegas Motor Speedway, so he rebuilt it. Now, not too many drivers seem to be satisfied with the newly rebuilt track.

Goodyear wasn't satisfied with the results of pre-season testing at the new LVMS, so it modified its tires. Now, not too many competitors seem to be satisfied with the tires and how they (don't) perform on the newly rebuilt track.

Declining popularity of NASCAR racing, as evidenced by ticket sales and television ratings, would seem to suggest that fans are less than satisfied with the product NASCAR has been delivering.

And, of course, there is the Car of Tomorrow.

But it isn't only in the world of stock car racing that this trend is apparent. In the expanded motorsports universe, Toyota has its own woes in NASCAR and has been frustrated in its Formula One endeavors, but think of poor Honda.

The new Honda F1 entries will feature a color scheme (they call it "livery" in the grand prix world) supposed to look like the Earth as photographed from space. Rather than touting a conventional corporate sponsor and its logo, the cars are supposed to represent a recognition of the importance of environmental responsibility.

Honda, one of the frontrunners among global carmakers when it comes to alternative power systems for automobiles, is trying to promote out-of-the-box thinking in racing and their stated desire is to use the cutting-edge technology of F1 to improve transportation.

No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. In response to their efforts, Honda was slammed by the enviro-radicals Friends of the Earth, whose spin doctors called Honda hypocritical and dismissed motorsport as the most environmentally unfriendly activity on the planet.

Outside the racing arena, there's Super Bowl champion coach Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts, taking heat from gay rights groups for his selection as recipient of a "Friend of the Family" award to be presented by the conservative group Focus on the Family.

Dungy is, by every account, a fine example of a man in every other aspect of his life. Yet he is being criticized for his own lifestyle and personal ethics decisions by a segment of the population that, in other matters, seems to be all in favor of "choice."

In every walk of life, the complainers are taking an inordinate share of the mass-media pie, folks. The world of advertising, where it was once considered bad manners to bad-mouth a competitor except in a vague reference to "Brand X," has become nasty and unrestrained. So-called "news" reporting is more slanted than the new Las Vegas banking. Political discourse is even nastier than in the days when gentlemen legislators resorted to dueling pistols to settle their differences.

The antics of professional wrestlers sometimes seem to offer our best example of civil behavior.

The only winner, it would seem, might be Mark Young, who is blessed with an infinite number of selections to whom he can shout, "Just shut up!" in his TR.com blog.

It's all too true -- the squeaking wheels get the grease. Sometimes it makes you wish they'd get "greased," all right, but in the parlance of Vietnam-era soldiers, not in a friction-reducing sense.

I'm sure there's a peacenik organization ready to respond indignantly to that suggestion. Rage away, peace lovers. It's not in vogue, you know, to be satisfied with anything these days.