Head butts ram home message that someone’s grouchy
By Beth Teitell
Boston Herald Columnist
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
What’s up with the head butt?
Two weeks after Zinedine Zidane slammed the butt heard around the world, English jockey Paul O’Neill planted one on his horse, City Affair, allegedly in retaliation for being thrown at the Stratford races last weekend. Though who knows, maybe the horse made a crack about O’Neill’s mother, ‘‘Your mama this, pal!”
With the man-butts-horse (and subsequent apology) tale making international news, the question is why: Why does a head butt grab our attention in a way a punch doesn’t?
Yes, it’s the Hummer of the assault world and a gift to headline writers (‘‘Tete Offensive” and ‘‘The Head-Butting Butthead” were my favorites from the Zidane World Cup butting), but there’s more to it than that.
Beasts are supposed to butt - think rams, hippopotamuses, the late, thick-headed pachycephalosaurus - but humans aren’t. And yet we do. Zidane’s attack triggered not only lists of other members of the ‘‘head butt hall of fame” (basketball’s Dennis Rodman, French actor Gerard Depardieu, ‘‘Star Wars” bounty hunter Jango Fett, writer Norman Mailer, cartoon star Homer Simpson) but a ‘‘how-to” by online magazine Slate.
‘‘The proper motion,” Slate said, ‘‘is described as something like a sneeze, or even a bout of vomiting. The attacker steps in with his neck muscles relaxed and his mouth closed. Then he bends at the stomach and snaps his head down while stiffening his neck.”
Our head-butt fascination recalls an earlier obsession with unsportsmanlike behavior: Who can forget the bite Mike Tyson took out of Evander Holyfield’s right ear in 1997? A bite, it should be noted, prompted by - what else? - an alleged head butt. ‘‘I can’t keep getting butted,” Tyson said, ‘‘I have kids to raise.”
And oh, what an example to set. Bite don’t butt, son.
A head butt is not far from the manly chest butt - the celebratory leap-and-smack that resembles two whales breaching. It’s a friendly, joyful move, usually accompanied by cries of ‘‘Boo-yah!” or words to that effect.
And yet . . . a few inches higher, and you’re in bad-butting territory. Go figure.
Maybe this is just a bad summer for physical gestures. Take U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. The Connecticut Democrat’s in the primary fight of his life after President Bush appeared to smooch him on the cheek after last year’s State of the Union address. For electoral purposes, better the president should have head-butted him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently planted his own smooch on a small child’s unsuspecting tummy, though I doubt a head butt would have been preferable. And what of President Bush and his spontaneous neck rub to German Chancellor Angela Merkel? Again, better than a head butt, but only just.
Still, while this trend is disturbing, it holds some entertaining possibilities. Think of it: Turnpike chief Matt Amorello and Gov. Mitt Romney - foreheads at 20 paces, anyone?
