OK, I’m done now…

Not trying to claim equivalence with media worship of certain white athletes here, just attempting to answer the question you posted in #7.

I’ll always maintain that the majority of people in all areas of media just want to be attached to celebrity. Whether they suck up to or trash it, they just want to be near celebrity…

Anyway, I don’t think the presence of competition is the problem, but the lack of fair competition…

I’m sorry, but I don’t think the issues of how the media treats black and white atheletes is all, um, black and white. Most media people are lazy, thin-skinned, self-important and downright catty. If it was 100 percent race, where’s the breathless coverage of AI’s recent trial, or that dude being dropped out of JR Smith’s car?

The interview is very good, Jweiler. I lost interest in baseball cards in my late teens — sometime after it was deemed that the little gems had to be forever cased in plastic. The hobby at that point just seemed to lose its fun and innocence for me. Which is too bad seeing as I lost out on tens of thousands of dollars not keeping those cards…

I agree that we live in a hierarchical society whereby those on top guard their group position. However, don’t you think that it is ironic that one of the function of sports (and competition in general) is to teach people how to win and how to lose? By that, I mean that sports is one of our greatest tools for teaching children not to complain when they finish second. If you’re taught not to complain about the referee or the rules of the game, then anyone who doesn’t accept their lot in life is just a sore loser. Putting competition on a pedestal is one of the most effective means to legitimize hierarchies.

Kinda puts sports in a different light, doesn’t it?

Everybody hates inequality, but everybody loves competition. But, with competition (be it economic, political, or social), come winners and losers. You can’t have it both ways.

Don’t be stupid.

I’m not a professional journalist and I don’t have a bully pulpet. In my job, I wield a great deal of power and have a great deal of responsibility. There are certain situations there where is would be easy for me to perform the same symbolic function as these media garbage whore douchbags do on an daily basis with black athletes. I do not because I AM A PROFESSIONAL. Wastes of human skin like O’Keefe would do well to recognize and consider fufilling their responsibilities instead of using their positions of power and influence in mean-spirited character assasination and hate mongering. I hope you’re not too stupid to see the difference.

My language is harsh for two reasons, the first is that I’m frustrated beyond belief with these pricks not being accountable to anyone or anything save their own junior schoolish instincts for malicious gossip writ large for public consumption. The second is that they are getting what they deserve. I’ll not show them the respect of common courtesy when they have done nothing but try to demonize every black athlete who doesn’t shuck, grin and jive and show teeth when they come ca callin’ for a sound bite. F-em.

As to your Jason reference, good. Bizarro Jason, I like it. he IS bass-ackward.

You are, without a doubt, the Bizarro Jason. The things YOU say create hatred and divisiveness. Why it is o.k. for you to say the personal things you say about people is a mystery to me.

I think “Game of Shadows” lays out a very convincing case that Bonds cheated with performance-enhancing drugs. He’s sat quietly while one of his oldest friends has sat in prison on contempt charges. He falsely told law enforcement that another boyhood friend was stealing and selling his memorabilia. He screwed around on his wife and used his kids as human shields during a press conference a few years ago. And he will break baseball’s most important record with the help of prohibited drugs. Why is it unfair to point that out?”

What is unfair, you ignorant douchebag, caveman, is to use the bully pulpet of the press to gang up on a man and create hatred for it’s sake, solely because the white dominated media hates any black man who doesn’t kiss their collective asses.

I’ve always had the notion that White American Culture has at it’s core and as it’s most fundamental flaw, a complete lack of understanding of or caring for the concept of simple Justice, simple fairness. That this douchebag and his overwhelmingly white colleagues in the mainstream media actually go to sleep at night after yet another day of lynching black athletes they don’t like, because, well, they don’t like them, and because they don’t grin like buffoons in their faces, absolutely disgusts me. And it completely validates my position.

That this douchebag uses his bully pulpet with absolutely no sense of responsibility for the society in which he lives, creating hatred and devisiveness at every turn, and yet calls himself a journalist is pathetic. This complete and utter asshole doesn’t begin to have to right to call himself a journalist. Let’s just call the MF what he really is, a racist piece of shit, muckraker who is only this far removed from Jimmy Bob down at the truck stop about to go hunting for some coon.

So the reality is that we live in hierarchical society where the individual is more readily defined by his group standing (i.e race, socio-economic status, gender/sexuality) than bny his own personal qualities. So if you’re not a white, middle-upper class, straight white man, then you’re in the doghouse. And for those of us in the doghouse, this is no surprise. But when considering this is a dog-eat-dog system that we live in, why do we expect the guys on top to change? The rules are that once you scratch and claw your way to the top then you lockdown and hold it until somebody makes you let go. So why are we shocked that the Mike Greenberg’s of the world are holding tight to their pedestal. Honestly, wouldn’t you? It is, afterall, how we are raised.

Y’all let him off the hook. O’Keeffe was right to raise the name of Patrick Ewing, because from where I sit, it was his unforgiveable blackness which launched the modern era of college b-ball.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for some of these sportswriters. The almost universally believe have imbibed the breast milk of “white supremacy doctrines.” Most believe in their inherent moral superiority. Can you imagine the psychological pain that would be inflicted by having to write a biting, moral critique of Tom Brady or Brett Favre? It’s no wonder it isn’t done.

Exogenous fears are easy to work with. And, sadly, it what allows folks like Chmura to fly under the radar, folks like Benoit to escape scrutiny until it’s too late, and it even allows the culture (taken to an extreme) to valorize serial killers and even hire them at security operations like ADT. The cultural and inter-personal capacity to flag those behaviors are routinely shut down when the press looks the other way at egregious violations of a moral code.

If it’s okay for Scooter Libby to walk, and okay for Brady to bone models, baby-make and bounce, how can it be a crime to drive the speed limit at 3:30? How can it be a crime to allegedly do what McGwire did and be vilified? Well, it can only be a crime if the people making that accusation have lost their minds; have ceased to operate along the logical and moral axes of their stated values; have begun to demonstrate a psychopathic racial personality.

And that’s what O’Keeffe and his colleagues have done. Rationality and objectivity are not merely challenges. Those ideals are impossible. Death threats, hate mail to a baseball player while a President wiretaps and falsifies claims resulting in the deaths of nearly 1 million men, women and children…in a participatory, representative democracy? Right.

The pyschopathic racial personality is alive and well – and the positions (read as “locked beliefs and practices”) are tightly fused and wholly non-negotiable.

Brooklyn Boy,

I agree it would be interesting to see more back and forth between O’Keefe and some of his critics on this site. But, then again, it seems like TSF has a story (or two) on Bonds every day. Maybe we could get a story on Eli Manning calling out Tiki. Now, Eli is a person we can all agree to hate (disclaimer: I’m an LSU fan).

Great story. I shied away from being “all sports” on my blog at first for a similar reason, but looking around I realized that there were plenty of bloggers of the non-meathead persuasion. In fact, I’d say that’s probably part of why a lot of smart people turn to sports blogging, because they don’t give a damn “Who’s Now”.

I’m still trying to diversify in my freelance writing though. I just don’t want to be pigeonholed.