He broke a rule, and the first in NFL history to ever get caught breaking that particular rule, mind you.

His suspension in that regards is fully warranted.

I’m not sure yet whether I agree with Goodell’s Czar-like rule yet, but the NFLPA agreed to give him that power, so it’s on them more than him.

I agree with Dave Z and KevDog before me, the NBA is trying to co-opt the thug image. I think the hip-hop thing is a great comparison. The NBA and hip-hop both are both predominantly Black. So there is an inherent image, fostered by society, of the thug (i don’t have to re-explain racial profiling to all but ONE person posting on this string so I won’t waste my time). By co-opting the image, the Sterns and Time-Warners gets the best of both worlds and a certain element of ‘gansta’ has been brought into the mainstream.

First of all, like Dave points out in the article, a guy from the white suburbs can really get into the NBA because it lets him feel like he’s hip. Let’s face it, being Black is sort of cool, or so it is perceived to those who have never being stopped for Driving While Black or faced any other sort of racism. Knowing Ebonics, or the hottest jam, is ‘cool’. So it’s a white guy’s chance to be a part of it, be a little bit of a rebel while looking in safely from the sidelines. Same goes for hip-hop’s, just substitute record execs for NBA. And if you get the white guys into it, you have a lot more people to pull money from. So you have, in a way, the thug image kept ever-present to make white folks interested.

The other half of that, however, is that like I said, it perpetuates that the thug image. The NBA seems to have really mastered that–it keeps its players on the edge. They want that bad boy image, but if you go too far, Stern has this space he’s created to distance himself from it, because the NBA takes no accountability for helping to create that bad boy imagery. So you gotta play the game, wear the right clothes, or they’ll distance themselves from you, even though they encouraged you to be rough around the edges in the first place. They use the threat of the same racist culture they’re a part of to keep players in line. Play ball with us or we’ll find someone else willing to do so.

Stephen Jackson is a perfect example. How can the same guy go from outcast to golden child for the same thing, toughness? When it served his purpose, Stern disowned Jackson. Now, when it serves his purpose, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with him drawing an NBA salary.

But here’s hope: Hip-hop is just coming full circle. It started as an underground movement, slowly became popular over years of hard work by pioneers to where it finally won a mass audience. Now that it has won that audience, and here’s the key, now that there’s profit to be made, all of a sudden, there are investments to protect and images to project. Same with NBA hoops. Basketball is more popular than ever, both here in the states and everywhere else in the world. Big money, baby.

To backtrack, take a look at rock n roll. It, too, had a lot of Black roots, and that’s a lot of the reason it met with mass resistance from the establishment. But soon enough it was mainstream, and invaded by the profit-seekers. It became an industry (remember “Corporate Rock Sucks?”) But then, rock fought back and at least there is still some artistry to be found in a lot of rock n roll.

Hip-hop is starting to fight back. Nas’s new album is called “Hip-hop is Dead”, and he points out that very thing–that hip-hop is becoming no longer a music of the people, a music of movement, but a music of stagnation and regression. So there is a debate underway, anyway.

And we know about Etan Thomas, and Steve Nash, and a few other players who have spoken out about the current state of hoops and the world. Hopefully, the trend will continue, in both hip-hop and hoops, to take them back for our side. And like DZ says in the article, it’s all about the political situation in general, which at least shows signs of positive change.

Wow, I hope this makes sense. It’s 2am and I’m going to bed.

“Back to what the hell…. This is something I’ve tried to wrap my head around. It seems like all the commissioners seem to be united in having a Rudyard Kipling complex; “The Commissioner Kiplings” is what I call them.

It’s this idea that they are going to be the people who have this approach that says we are going to civilize these barbaric young, black athletes. And they won’t use those words exactly, they’ll use words like “urban” and “hip-hop” and “gangsta culture.” All that really come down to at the end of the day is that, with the media’s help, they can make sanctifying and “legitimate” racial profiling. It doesn’t matter about the content of these folks character; it’s about how they dress, how they look, how they speak. Basically, they’re saying it’s bad for business and that they’re going to take it upon themselves to be the moral guardians of sports.”

I think this is a fascinating point. I assume, and still do, that Stern is a souless, evil money mad dictator whose apparent attack on black players’ culture is based on his desire to appeal to the “red states.’ but what if this is true. Then he’s slipped off of the banana peel keeping him on THIS side of insanity. Thing is, I’d not put it past him.

“That’s what makes the NBA legitimate. The fact that it is raw is what makes it real. You saw that so much in Golden State series. You saw overwhelmingly white fans in that Bay Area gym going nuts for Stephen Jackson. You saw all these middle-class Silicon Valley heads going out to those games to cheer and when Jackson hit three after three and give that, too cool for words scowl they were losin’ their minds through the process of identification. They were yelling, “Yeah, Stephen Jackson! Yeah!”

And all of a sudden the announcers went from saying, “Stephen Jackson needs to go to Guantanamo Bay,” were saying, “Wow, Jackson adds the toughness to this Golden State team that they didn’t have before.”

See, that’s the cultural cache that’s given to that white audience. So if you try to crush that like Stern’s trying to do – well, you’re playing with fire with what makes the NBA matter.”

Exactly, exactly, exactly. Stern should learn from history of what happens when someone tries to take away the soul of an endeavor that African Americans place their footprints on. I won’t bore anyone here with details unless asked, but just look up the name of Paul Whiteman re: jazz music to see how absurd this Euro-Ball and Middle American values crap Stern is pushing down our throats is.

“And when I was in LA I went to Fremont High School – and this is one of the things that gets me so mad – the same people who Whitlock is calling the “Black KKK” – I mean, I talk to some of these kids and they’re the most beautiful-hearted people I’ve had the chance to sit down in a room with in my life. You know, just talking sports, talking Ali, talking history – and it was just an amazing experience.

The LA tour was a microcosm to answer your question. I did a talk at Occidental College. There were about 100 people there. It was 99% white and I had to stop and explain what the Civil Rights movement was. I was saying to them, “Muhammad Ali was critical of the transformation in this country from Civil Rights to Black Power.” And there’s all this whispering and someone says, “Yeah, my teacher talks about that a lot; what does that even mean?” And I said, “How much a year are you spending on this education?” And they said back, “Oh, about 40 grand.”

I spent the majority of my youth in the Crenshaw’LaBrea area and I graduated from Occidental college so this bit strikes home to me. ZIrin pretty much nails it. Especially that about Oxy. I had never been exposed to white folks until my time there and I was simply astounded at the willful ignorance and sense of entitlement. And then to have this Tom Jason Whitlock bend over for his white masters, well, fool will learn in time.

Jason S. Writes:

Substitute the following: Americans for Germans; United States for Germany; Blacks for Jews; racist for anti-Semitic; and past oppression for Third Reich. I have a feeling if the study were conducted in the U.S. using those terms and those questions many of the responses will be similar.

Truer words wee never spoken. I’ve often said, and I;m very confident in saying so, that the only thing that has kept America from becoming Nazi Germany is the presence of black folks. The dynamic, played out every day, between a people with a nature and culture one way and a decree, made thus by it’s own words, to be better than they are and the pesence of a people agitating for them to not forget their responsibilities to their ownwords.

As to Jason:
Steve Nash, despite playing with the all-NBA first team center, the sixth man of the year, a first team al D teammate and another bonafide all-star, is down exactly as far as J. Kidd is, Thing is, Kidd hasn’t lst home court and Nash has. Ha!

As far as your other ramblings, well. I guess every site needs a class resident clown.

I have more to say but I gotta go for now…

Sad.

But indicative of the work that is left to do regarding race, social justice, and equality.

I commend those of you who have spent considerable time trying to pull young Jason from behind his veil of ignorance. Unfortunately, you will not succeed. But even if you do, just remember, there is an entire country full of under-informed, misguided Jasons awaiting your attention and in need of your very best effort!

As for me, I’m hangin up my Cap’n Save-a-Ho cape and tights, and retiring from the game…

I can’t side with you here though. You’re on your own

As far as the athletes who were pulled over and then arrested, I first want to say that I didn’t check if the ones I mentioned were black, and that could be a major oversight. If we can just proceed on the assumption, though, that they were persons-of-color, I don’t think it would be too egregious, since we’re just commenting on a blog and not actually investigating this for a published article or anything.

To the main point. My point wasn’t that those people hadn’t committed a crime. I was saying that, potentially, there are equal numbers of people of all races committing the same crimes and not suffering the consequences due to discriminatory use of police discretion. I’m not defending the behavior so much as wondering about the seriously negative inference that can be drawn regarding a value the U.S. holds up as a tenet of our society — democratic checks, including due process, on improper use of state authority. If authority is being abused, it certainly isn’t fair to label entire groups of people as more crime-prone than other groups, and it’s detrimental to the ideals of equality that we strive towards.

In terms of fault, I tried to make clear that everyone can be looked at through the prism of individal responsibility and that view can be justified…if were talking about INDIVIDUALS. The problem is that events like the Pacman Jones suspension then get imputed to entire groups, like black athletes. If you want to talk at that level of generalization, you have to address things on a statistical basis and question the reasons for inequality in statistics. Otherwise, you simply can’t discuss problems facing “communities” or certain races, only how Pacman Jones, devoid of any group characteristics, should handle his own life.

The system and institutions are made of people, but the people running them are collectively entrusted with power by the country, itself an institution made up of people. The country, or any smaller-level institution (like the media, or a county police department) can obviously be flawed, and ignoring that has proven to be pretty harmful to everyone.

Which flows into the generational cycle. You can’t possibly make that point without looking at history’s influence over the present. To go back one generation is not enough; you have to go back several. Well, if you do that, you’re pretty quickly in a black era of our country where the system, and the individuals that make it up, created the gross inequality we worry about now. “Ghettos” didn’t happen randomly — they were the result of every policy and social decision made by and in this country since the institution (again, that word) of slavery was set up and then, thankfully, torn down. I didn’t mean to talk about the white kids experience with contempt; I think it is definitely the ideal. What I’m “going on about” is that the starkly different experiences are linked to the very different adult lives of people of different races. The different environments are clearly reasons for differences in the social and economic lives of different races on a group level. To pick out one example of a member of a group and talk about how that person individually could have prevented his own failure misses the point. I definitely understand that this point of view can be confusing, but that is because there are no easy answers for this kind of complex problem. It’s easier to say everyone is responsible for their own lot in life, but that doesn’t make it the right answer.

So, how should Pacman Jones be “deal[t] with?” Maybe he does need to be suspended, given the chance to get his life in order with therapy or something else, I don’t know. I do know that he shouldn’t be the poster-child for what plagues an entire group, either athletes or black communities. To solve an entire group’s problems, we need better policies, more effort, and A LOT of discussion about all of it.

gambling=organized crime. if you don’t realize that, no link can help you.

“It’s called being an employee of a large corporation. Come back down to earth. Have you ever worked in a corporate environment? The CEO of HBO was just forced to resign (read: was fired) for being arrested of an assault. Not charged, not convicted, but arrested. Thoughts?”

you’ve stated a total non sequitur at best and proven my point at worst. the colonial mindset is prolific and you are rpoof positive.

“You’re going to have to define ’social reality’ for this to make any sense. Unless again you’re talking about your unfounded claim that the NFL and NBA are in bed with the mafia. Goodell and Stern are businessmen. Their business, however, is not dealing with (the still undefined) ’social realities.’ ”

many of the players involved in these off-field incidents come from less than privileged backgrounds. the mindset they have developed from their previous 19-22 years of life is not offset by 1-2 years in the NFL or NBA. i agree that it is not Stern and Goodell’s business (btw, i never said they were “in bed” with the mob, but strawman arguments are always fun, aren’t they. also btw, not all organized crime is the mafia)to deal with the social reality of entrenched, institutionalized racism–but it should be. they’d rather judge a player guilty and pack his ass off to NFL/NBA jail than try to work with him and help him through his transition into a different life. that’s just plain wrong. the social reality these players dealt with in their foramtive years was a culture that didn’t give a shit about them until they could score touchdowns and pull down rebounds.

“they doggedly pursue steroids by taking down players while acting as if they themselves did not use a Congressionally-granted anti-trust exemption to knowingly (in my opinion) profit from the sale, use, and distribution of a controlled substance.

Link, please.”

two things. one, if you’d notice, i expressed this as my opinion, not a matter of fact. two, read this: http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2001/1205/1290707.html and then you’ll see that baseball was granted an anti-trust exemption that allows the owners to collude on pretty much everything except player salaries, which i think enabled them to prevent any team-based speaking out and testing for steriods and other PED’s. again, this is what i think, not anything i know to be the case. reading is a skill.

“What ’societal problems’ caused Palmeiro to take steroids? Pray tell, I am very interested.”

the win-at-all-cost mentality did that. the ends-jusitfies-the-means coporate mentality that pervades our society did that. the fact that we don’t want to hear anything from a hispanic ballplayer, except “beisbol been berry, berry good to me” did that. how often do you hear about the wonderful things roberto clemente did for PR and poor people in other places? not too much. how much do you hear about his rocket arm and lightening quick bat? a whole hell of a lot. we always here about how much he did for the game, but not so much about how much he did for other people. there is a world outside your cubicle, my friend. it’s a crazy place. you should come check it out sometime. we place the athletes on pedestal, ask them to be superhuman, then when they aren’t, we want to judge them and punish them. when they plunge that needle into their ass, or pop that pill, we want to pretend we didn’t play a role in that. yes, we are all responsible for our own actions, but we also need to realize how the actions that we choose freely, like booing a ballplayer for that warning track fly ball, or smirking at him for a his lack of street cred, might play role in the steriod he ingests to stretch that ball just a bit farther, or those old friends he left behind that he calls up to bolster his rep.

Pacifist Viking, you’ve got an answer for everything – was it right for HBO to fire their CEO because he got arrested?

Well no shit. This is breaking news to you? Some people have to work a lot harder to earn these “equal opportunities.” If I was born out of wedlock to a heroine addicted mother, and we lived in a box on the street, then yes, I wouldn’t have been “given” certain opportunities.

But I wasn’t. I was born into a two-parent household, and they both had jobs, and we lived in a home. Nobody gave that to them – they earned it themselves. And they passed it down to me. And then I had a choice to follow that same “path,” or to drop out of college, sell drugs, impregnate six different women, secure a minimum-wage paying job, and live week-to-week. If I had chosen the latter, then my hypothetical children wouldn’t have been given these equal opportunities because of choices that I hypothetically would’ve made. But I didn’t make those choices. And now my children WILL have those opportunities. It’s all a big cycle. Expecting the government to dig you out of a hole is not the way to go about this whole thing. You work for what you get; for some people, it does require a hell of a lot more work. But you don’t want to hear about that — you are more comfortable and too busy blaming the nameless, faceless “institutions” and “native-settler dialect” to achieve anything of any real substance.

People are in jail (95% of the time, I would guess) because of actions they have decided to do. Why are they “glaringly unequal” to one side? I don’t know. Maybe because an unequal amount of certain people made unwise decisions.

This country is built on due process. It bothers me when people look the other way for personal convenience in any way, shape or form.

Corporations are built for financial gain.

I don’t know all the facts regarding Albrecht’s situation.

Personal responsibility is great. What people are saying is, not everybody has been giving the same economical, educational, or geographical opportunities, and so not everybody has an equal opportunity to use their “personal responsibility.”

But you fail completely to address why, as Dan said, “the statistics of people in jail are so glaringly unequal.” You simply ignore these statistical facts and rant about “personal responsibility.” What is your explanation for why “the statistics of people in jail are so glaringly unequal”? Actually, I’m not sure I even want to know.

In your opinion, was HBO in the right for canning this guy for his alleged behavior?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18562206/

We are not apologists for any alleged behavior, we just report the facts.