Sports Media Review

Moving Back Day

Hi All

As I mentioned in my goodbye over at The Starting Five, I need to take a break, since I have a manuscript due to a publisher on December 31st. I may do an occasional post here between now and then, but it will be irregular. It is my intention to resume regular posting after the start of the new year, so I would encourage you all to check back in.

Jonathan

Liberal Bias

I am breaking a rule here. Usually, I just cover sports media. If sports media stray into non-sports topics, as happened with John Amaechi and Don Imus, for example, that’s fine. The focus is still on sports media. But, today, I am going to violate that rule (sort of) by talking about Newsbusters, a non-sports website devoted to exposing what it believes to be liberal media bias. Their topic: Keith Olbermann, and NBC”s announcement last week that it was hiring him to co-host its Sunday night football studio show - Football Night in America. The Newsbusters headline: Liberal Bias Invades NFL.

Sports Media Watch covered the story when it broke, noting that the reaction was generally positive but also flagging some of the criticism, particularly from right-wing sources that dislike Olbermann’s politics.

Among those sources is Newsbusters, which begins by warning that “football
fans can probably expect some liberal bias in the upcoming NFL season.”

Newsbusters complained that, back in 2000, when ABC was considering putting Rush Limbaugh in the booth for Monday Night Football, that possibility “horrified the Washington Post and other Liberal Media outlets.” I should stop and note that it’s a measure of the state of our discourse that the Washington Post, which strongly supported the invasion of Iraq and has repeatedly written dishonest editorials advocating social security privatization could be reflexively called “liberal,” but this is a label readily applied to any media outlet that is not a reliable mouthpiece for Republican talking points. But, Newsbusters focuses on the comments of Tom Boswell, longtime sports columnist for the Post, who did disparage Limbaugh when ABC was considering hiring him. Newsbusters then suggests that one need look no farther than the comments of “well known leftist” Bryant Gumbel, when he criticized the 2006 Winter Olympics for its lack of Black athletes, for a likely taste of what football fans would get from Olbermann.

Newsbusters also pointedly (it thinks) asks whether the Post and other “liberal media outlets” will decry Olbermann’s selection.

Newsbusters frequently relies on the use of labels as substitutes for actual arguments on
the merits. So, calling someone a liberal or leftist, and then repeating what they said,
without actually explaining the presumptive flaws in the arguments they’re “exposing” is
typical of the website. Therefore, once the labels are affixed (however accurate), all
that’s left for Newsbusters to do is to find some limp comparisons and call it a column.

There was, of course, strongly negative reaction to Gumbel’s comments in much of the
media but, more to the point, Gumbel’s comments came on his own show on HBO, where he obviously has a degree of editorial latitude that one would simply not find on something like a network football telecast. So, as a guide to what Olbermann might say on NBC, this example is all but worthless, unless you think that calling Olbermann a liberal and Gumbel a “leftist” is the only conceivably relevant information from which to draw such a conclusion.

Given the demographic realities of who consumes sports media in America, including
football, a network is making a better bet to pick a political conservative than a
political liberal. That’s just a simple, inescapable fact. It follows from that
inescapable fact that NBC, though clearly interested in Olbermann because he has become a multi-platform celebrity, has little to gain by having Olbermann talk his brand of
politics during football broadcasts. And, Olbermann has made clear that he expects to
talk football, not politics, on Sunday nights.

Furthermore, it’s striking that Newsbusters dodges the most obvious flaw in their
ridiculous little expose - Olbermann was an acclaimed sportscaster for many years,
regarded by many as one of the most talented men ESPN has ever hired. And, Olbermann had that reputation long before he became known for his political views. In other words, though Olbermann’s current profile is undoubtedly appealing to NBC, the hire is a no-brainer because of his obvious talent as a sports guy. By contrast, when ABC considered hiring Limbaugh (and ESPN eventually did, a fact that, curiously, Newsbusters never mentions) it did so not because it had reason to believe that Limbaugh would be a great sportscaster.

Limbaugh earned his fame and reputation talking politics, not sports. And, ABC thought
that it could cash in on his general celebrity. Yes, Limbaugh’s a sports fan. No, he’s
not a professional sportscaster. Disney liked the demographic profile it thought Limbaugh
could appeal to and hoped that his football knowledge would be sufficient. That’s a very
different kind of calculation than the one NBC is making.

Newsbusters, by the way, also neglects to mention that Dennis Miller, whose political
views have clearly tacked right the past few years, was in the Monday Night football
booth not so long ago. But, such omissions are necessary to maintain the trope about
liberal bias. As an aside, Sports Media Watch noted Al Michaels’ political contributions
to the Republican party in 2004. What SMW did not mention, but is of relevance here, is
that Michaels made a snide reference to John Kerry as a flip-flopper in the Fall of 2004.
I wouldn’t argue that this is the end of the world and Michaels is, of course, entitled
to his opinion. But, given that the flip-flopper charge was probably talking point number
one for the Bush campaign that Fall, it’s noteworthy that the play-by-play announcer for
the number one regular sports broadcast in America repeated the charge.

This is classic stuff - the sports world is, of course, a predominantly conservative
place, and football is, without a doubt, a predominantly conservative world. But
newsbusters thinks politics is only an issue in that world when one well-known liberal -
whose sports qualifications are beyond reproach - gets hired for a sports media job for
which he’s obviously far more qualified than Rush Limbaugh ever was. (And, yes, I know
that Limbaugh had a job, almost thirty years ago, in media relations with the Kansas City
Royals. Sorry, I’m not impressed).

As an aside, I have never been a big fan of Olbermann as a sportscaster. His too-clever-by-half attitude isn’t my cup of tea and I don’t like his style any more now when he’s on the Big Show with Dan Patrick than I did when he was a sportscenter anchor a decade ago. But, what’s the bias exactly: that NBC would hire an obviously highly qualified sportscaster to do sports coverage and who happens to be liberal (which is of dubious value given their target demographic)? Or, is it that criticisms of Limbaugh, however valid, are presumptively out of bounds? Either way, that liberal bias sure has run amok.

From Sports Illustrated

A heads up: Jeff Pearlman has graciously agreed to be interviewed for TSF. I’ll have that interview up in the next day or two.

Two items of note from the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated:

1) Sally Jenkins has a terrific story about the Carlisle Indian School, the extraordinary institution for Native Americans that produced Jim Thorpe and, according to Jenkins’ title: “The Team that Invented Football.” Though Jenkins doesn’t use the phrase, Carlisle’s coach, the legendary Pop Warner, applied Moneyball principles nearly a century before that term entered popular parlance. Faced with a small student population and saddled with overwhelming resource constraints, the leverage that Warner found was the incredible speed and adaptability of his charges, which he parlayed into football’s first vertically-oriented offensive attack. Jenkins explains that, under Warner’s tutelage, “Carlisle mastered an astounding array of trick plays – reverses, end arounds, flea-flickers – and forward passes.” In carrying out such innovations in order to compensate for the fact that Carlisle’s team was giving up more than thirty pounds per player to the elite football schools, like Army and Harvard, Warner and Carlisle “transformed a plodding, brutal college sport into the fact intricate game we know today.”

And, it wasn’t just Thorpe’s greatness either: Warner had built Carlisle into a legitimate national power before Thorpe ever set foot on the field (Thorpe appeared in his first game in 1907 – Warner arrived at the school in 1899). That Carlisle accomplished what it did (including beating Harvard and Army) despite its profound institutional disadvantages stands as one of the great achievements in the history of football.2) In the same issue, the hit-or-miss Rick Reilly misses. Reilly writes about Mike
Pressler, the Duke Lacrosse coach dismissed a year ago in the wake of the now discredited rape charges against three Duke players. Reilly’s column, “No Justice for the Coach” notes that Pressler was fired on April 5, about three weeks after the allegations were first made. Reilly recounts the fateful meeting between the coach and Duke athletic director Joe Alleva, in which Alleva told Pressler:

‘It’s not about the truth anymore…It’s about the faculty, the NAACP and the special interest groups.’ So, after a 153-82 record and a 100% of graduation rate in 16 years, Mike Pressler was canned.”

Because of the ultimate unviability of the charges against the three players, and partly because of the touchy atmosphere in which the charges were ultimately dismissed (in the immediate aftermath of Don Imus’ firing) – there’s has been a remarkable collective amnesia about the circumstances leading up to Pressler’s firing.

In fact, the Duke Lacrosse team had a history that preceded it, and it serves Rilly poorly to have pretended otherwise in his paean to Pressler. Here’s John Feinstein, famous sports writer and Duke grad, writing about that history last May:

“according to a report released on May 2 by seven members of the Duke faculty, there was a written report two years ago sent to top Duke administrators telling them that there was a serious problem with the behavior of the lacrosse team. What this tells us is that this party was far from being an isolated incident, it was part of a pattern that theschool chose to ignore.

It also tells us - definitively - that Tallman Trask, the school vice president who received the report and Joe Alleva, the athletic director who Trask mentioned the report to (without every giving it to him or being asked for it) should both be fired. Not reprimanded, not told to do better, fired. They had a written report from someone who worked at the school - not a member of the “out of control,” media as Duke apologists have taken to referring to as a cop-out for this debacle - but someone who worked for the school who had done research on specific incidents and found a pattern that concerned him enough to put those concerns in writing. Trask did nothing. Alleva did nothing.”

That “serious problem” with the Duke Lacrosse team included the disturbing fact that 15 of the team’s 47 players had been arrested over the previous three seasons, ranging from nuisance violations like public urination to more significant charge including, in one case, assault. Furthermore, the immediate precipitating cause both of Pressler’s firing and the cancellation of the team’s season, was not the rape allegations themselves. Here’s what the Associated Press reported last April 6, the day after Pressler was forced out:

“A lacrosse player’s e-mail rant about killing and skinning strippers in his Duke University dorm room has led to his coach’s resignation, the season’s cancellation and an internal probe into the school’s response to alleged violence by athletes.”

And, here’s AP’s account of the offending email:

“authorities unsealed documents stating that less than two hours after the alleged rape, McFadyen sent an e-mail saying he was planning an encore to “tonights (sic) show.” The message, addressed “To whom it may concern,” said, “however there will be no nudity.”

“I plan on killing the bitches as soon as the(y) walk in and proceding (sic) to cut their skin off,” wrote McFayden, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound Atlantic Coast Conference honor roll player who was one of five Duke players from the exclusive Delbarton School in Morristown, N.J., adding in vulgar terms that he would find the act sexually satisfying. The e-mail was signed with McFayden’s jersey number, 41.”

In an age where athletes’ character has come under such intense scrutiny, it’s noteworthy that this fact about Duke’s Lacrosse team has been lost to history. (USA Today’s front page cover story on Friday was about the unprecedented level of concern the NFL has shown toward the off-field conduct of potential draftees. And, a considerable focus of those character concerns is on what might be called the nuisance offense of having smoked marijuana).

If one wants to be very generous, one can argue that Pressler was, ultimately dealt an unfair hand in the sense that his team’s highly questionable “character” (at least if we’re following the standards for defining character set by contemporary sports discourse – namely any trouble with the law) would never have come to light had it not been for charges that ultimately proved unfounded. But, if Reilly had such a slam dunk case of unfairness to write about, then he needn’t have whitewashed the record of Pressler’s team’s disciplinary problems which are, ultimately, the responsibility of any collegiate coach worth his salt. That Reilly did omit such obviously germane facts from his account of Pressler’s treatment suggests that Reilly, on some level, knew his righteous indignation stood on a weaker foundation than he let on.

Tidbits - April 19, 2007

1) Just a couple of quick notes here. First, kudos to Bomani Jones of ESPN’s page 2, for pointing out the absurdity of the $100,000 fine the NFL levied against Brian Urlacher for wearing a baseball cap during Super Bowl week that had a non-NFL sponsor on it. When I heard this fine reported on Mike and Mike this morning, I was surprised at how little attention they gave it. Surely, I thought, they would comment on how steep that number is in comparison with the amount the NFL usually fines players for doing things like stomping on other guys’ heads. Well, Jones did the leg work and pointed out the following:

Urlacher was fined a whopping $100,000 for wearing a hat promoting vitaminwater at Super Bowl media day. That’s more than the total fines against Bill Romanowski for kicking Larry Centers, spitting on J.J. Stokes, breaking Kerry Collins’ jaw with an illegal hit and three separate illegal hits and a punch on Tony Gonzalez.

Well, that about tells us everything we need to know about the NFL’s priorities. For the record, the NFL is playing “the kind of gangsta” that is “to be respected” in Jones’ view:

Gatorade pays to be down with the program, to be part of the league’s unwavering consistency. It’s part of the league’s fabric, which keeps it in the public eye at all times. Gatorade knows we’re going to tune in every week and, just like us, it wants to be down.

So does Reebok, whose apparel contract with the NFL prevented coaches from wearing suits on the sidelines. Coaches weren’t allowed to wear suits until 2006, once Reebok developed a line of suits. Reebok didn’t sign its 10-year sponsorship deal with the NFL so Jack Del Rio could look sharp in someone else’s duds. It signed on to be part of the money-making machine.

Vitaminwater didn’t give the NFL a damn thing. Gotta pay to play, baby.

Brian Urlacher, about as large a star as the league allows for, isn’t going to interfere with the machine with any personal agenda. Don’t be surprised if the next guy who tries something like this faces a much stiffer penalty, perhaps even a suspension. When money is on the line, the NFL will do what is has to do to get what it wants.

Now that’s gangsta.

Next time Commissioner Goodell talks about the league’s “values” just - remember - multiple attempts to seriously injure players < wearing an errant cap.

2) Mike and Chris had Jim Dolan on their show on Tuesday (their afternoon show - not the absolutely brutal morning show they’re doing as temporary fill-ins in the Imus time slot. Truly painful to listen to). Mike and Chris have their likes and dislikes. If they dislike you, they can be unfair, but they can also become tenacious journalists, holding sports decision-makers accountable for bad decisions in a way that really serves their listeners. On the other hand, if they like someone, and they like Dolan, Mike and Chris go soft. Dolan is a disaster - an incompetent manager, an egotistical maniac, and a disaster for the Knicks. Mike and Chris know this, and they half-heartedly asked him about the general direction of the team. Francesa asked him with evident skepticism whether he honestly thought the Knicks were headed in the right direction. They’re not - for the record. They haven’t been over five hundred in six years, they’re tens of millions of dollars over the cap with more bad contracts than any team in the league, and they will now have to surrender a lottery pick for the second year in a row because of the Eddy Curry trade. When Dolan talks about the Knicks being on the path to a championship team (which he actually said), you have to laugh.

Russo did directly challenge him on the Curry trade, telling Dolan:

“you have to admit that was a terrible trade. “he a heart condition, the Bulls didn’t like him…they were dying to get rid of him. The point is, Isiah didn’t just give up last year’s pick, which was Tyrus Thomas, who’s playing great, but this year’s pick and the Bulls were dying to get rid of him…”

Dolan did concede that if the Knicks knew then what they know now (that the team would miss the playoffs these past two seasons), maybe they would have thought differently. And, Mike and Chris both criticized Isiah for failing to lottery-protect the draft choices, a standard of NBA trades nowadays. But, Dolan insisted, the Knicks “weren’t the only ones competing for Curry.”

I don’t know whether Dolan is lying, has a bad memory, was lied to by Isiah or what, but here’s what the New York Times had to say about the demand for Curry shortly after the trade, in October 2005:

the Knicks were apparently the only team willing to make that gamble (on Curry’s heart). No team offered Curry a contract this summer when he was a restricted free agent. And, according to Paxson, no other team offered to trade for Curry. ”I had several teams tell me they weren’t interested because they were scared about his health,” Paxson said.

Paxson could be lying, too, except that he has no reason to in this instance. I have written about this ad nauseam, I know. And, in it’s in own way, it’s no worse than the unconscionable decision to give thirty million dollars to Jerome James as a reward for having played one good week of basketball in his entire NBA career. But, given how Mike and Chris treat other guests, the way they let Dolan slide is unacceptable.

Hatchet Job

HNIC wrote a fantastic piece yesterday on Jackie Robinson and I just wanted to write a tangential post here, looking at an article Jeff Pearlman wrote for ESPN’s page 2 over the weekend about Barry Bonds’ decision to wear No. 42 for the Robinson celebration. I generally like Pearlman, and I like his politics (he’s one of the few mainstream sportswriters to be upfront about what those are). But, his piece on Bonds (about whom he wrote a well publicized book) was piling on at its most egregious. And, in the course of attacking Bonds for doing what scores of major leaguers did the past couple of days, he showed an ignorance of the complexity of Jackie Robinson himself, which HNIC so beautifully laid out.

As an aside, I want to note that my father, who died many years ago, was a political radical in his day and was among the folks who volunteered to be a body guard for Robeson during the fateful Peekskill concert to which HNIC referred. Robeson died in January, 1976, when I was ten, and I heard a lot about him, especially because my fifth grade music teacher, Mr. Scott, devoted the entire semester to studying Robeson after his passing.

OK, to Pearlman. To cut to the chase, Pearlman was deeply offended by the fact that Bonds decided to wear No. 42, comparing that decision to President Bush’s entirely phony efforts to drape himself in the clothing of an environmentalist while supporting policies that do clear detriment to the environment:

Of course, by now all noncomatose homo sapiens realize that Bush is to the environment what Hulk Hogan was to the Iron Sheik’s head. He’s pro- Alaska oil drilling, anti- the ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, pro- curtailing the federal standard for arsenic in drinking water and, most recently, anti- the right of states to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles.

He also hates long walks on the beach and birds that chirp.

And yet, when Bush shows up at a forest gate to kiss a leopard, none of us flinch. We are numb to the phenomenon. It is what it is — a public figure extolling a virtue, then doing zilch to support it.

Which leads us, naturally, to Barry Lamar Bonds.

What invalidates Bonds’ desire to wear Robinson’s Number, according to Pearlman:

his gesture is as authentic as a Sidd Finch heater. Now in his 22nd major league season, Bonds’ track record in areas of race and sports is, to be polite, abysmal. Here is a man who, according to infinite associates and peers, has rarely — if ever — gone out of his way to assist a rookie African-American teammate trying to find his way; who sees young black fans not as potential heirs to the game, but as autograph-seeking gnats to be insulted or dismissed. Four years ago, Bonds spit in the face of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum by ignoring an invitation to be presented with one of its Legacy Awards (taken aback by the public outcry, he finally visited four months later).

To his credit, Bonds once used his celebrity to influence a political campaign. To his discredit, the candidate he endorsed was former California governor Pete Wilson, an arch-conservative whose stances on minority issues were only slightly to the left of David Duke. In fact, Wilson seems something of a role model for the Bonds Guide to Honoring Dead Civil Rights Icons: In 1995, while promoting the “California Civil Rights Initiative,” a ballot measure that would ban all state affirmative action, Wilson routinely evoked the name (but not spirit) of Martin Luther King.

But, the worst crime of all in Bonds’ disgraceful decision to honor Robinson is the crime he’s committing against Henry Aaron:

Of the countless transgressions that make Bonds the last man who should wear No. 42, the one that gets me — that really, really, really gets me — is the way he has treated his black baseball forefathers like Aaron not as legends to be honored, but as stepping stones in his own maligned assault on the record books.

Whether one believes he cheated or not, reportedly the amount of documentation detailing Bonds’ usage of performance-enhancing drugs stretches to Pluto. With this in mind, how can Bonds both wear No. 42 for Robinson and surpass Aaron as baseball’s all-time home run leader?

If little else, Bonds is no dummy. He knows of Aaron’s legacy: of the hate mail and the death threats, of the extra security guards and the terror that one bullet from the stands would end his life. Surely Bonds knows that Aaron is not simply a baseball hero, but a shining beacon from the civil rights era. The courage Aaron displayed in taking the field each night, usually in a Deep South still dripping with racist venom, is something Bonds can never duplicate.

So, again, how does Bonds break the all-time home run record with a straight face? How can he speak of “the great Hank Aaron” (as he does) while doing everything in his power to expunge his name from the record books?

Pearlman concludes by arguing that Bonds’ decision only shows, once again, his supreme selfishness. Bonds’ decision, Pearlman asserts, simply confirms that Bonds lives by one ethos alone: “I am Barry Bonds, and I don’t give a damn.” Of course, if you believe this to be true of Bonds, and you want to badly enough, you can read that ethos into every one of his gestures, at bats, or public statements. But, my goodness, is this one a reach.

Let’s start with the claim that Bonds considers Black fans to be a nuisance. Does Bonds single out Black fans for ill-treatment, or is he just tired of fans in general? I would love to see evidence that Bonds does, in fact, think less of African American fans than white ones. More significantly, is it true that every player who agreed to wear No. 42 on Sunday and Monday is gracious with fans, willing to sign autographs under any circumstances? Is there a civility test that all players who decided to wear the number were asked to take before the commissioner gave them permission to honor Robinson in this particular way? (These are rhetorical questions - I know the answer). This is a petty and gratuitous shot.

Concering the awards ceremony, I don’t know the particulars of the case, but it does strike me as odd that Pearlman, like many others, could insist on the one hand that Bonds only cares about himself, is indifferent to anybody else’s feelings and spends his life looking for opportunites to give the finger to any and all. And, on the other hand, to be sensitive to bad publicity. Those two impulses don’t quite mesh, but since what’s inconceivable is that Bonds could ever actual have a change of heart or a decent bone in his body, one is left explaining his behavior in ways that are self-contradictory and illogical.

Concerning Aaron, I suppose what Pearlman would like Bonds to do is retire now, admit he cheated and quit pursuing Aaron’s record. I’m not really sure what that has to do with Jackie Robinson, however. Professional athletes are preternaturally hyper competitive people who, with few exceptions, want to compete as long as they can and as hard as they can. Bonds is still, unquestionably, a productive player and I doubt very much whether anyone in his position would do any differently. Does this make Bonds a good man? No, not particularly. But, it doesn’t make him unique, either, any different really from any of the other players who honored Jackie and are taking HGH or steroids, or amphetamines or whatever (and do we know for sure that Aaron never popped Greenies?) What separates Bonds from everyone else is his performance level, not his conscience. And, it’s a silly overstatement to speak of expunging Aaron from the record books. Did Aaron expunge Ruth from the record books, purging his legend from the collective conscience of baseball fans? Certainly not. When Bonds hits No. 756, it will be an awkward moment for baseball. But, it won’t make anyone forget Henry Aaron, anymore than Aaron made anyone forget Babe Ruth.

But, here’s the thing that’s most off-base about Pearlman. He slams Bonds for supporting former California governor Pete Wilson. I, too, hold Barry in low regard for supporting Wilson, a Republican who stood behind two of the most divisive campaigns in California history, one concerning a state ballot proposal to get rid of affirmative action and another concerning denying legal benefits to illegal immigrants. Whatever your views on the merits, those were ugly,  race-baiting campaigns and Wilson hopped on the bandwagon of both for the most crass calculations of political advantage at a time when California was in transition from a purple state to a blue state.

But, my own contempt for Wilson (and, I am sure, for the politics of the vast majority of major leaguers), has nothing to do with Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson was, as is well known, a Republican. He supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, who ran one of the most noxious presidential campaigns in modern times, and whose sole concentrated support in his landslide loss to President Johnson that November came from segregationist southerners. So, by Pearlman’s logic, isn’t Jackie Robinson to be held in contempt. As HNIC and others have noted, Robinson’s  political views were complex, conflicted and still evolving when he died at the age of 53. But, here’s the reality about Jackie - what he represents, in contemporary America, is a not liberal version of civil rights, but a watered down version that everyone can sign onto - you’ll find almost no one any longer outside of white supremacist quarters, who will openly advocate for a color line in baseball. The much more complex, subtle and difficult to dislodge aspects of racism - the economic deprivation, the broken communities, the disparities in funding for diseases that specifically afflict African Americans, and all that - the Robinson story, as it’s told in sports discourse, and understood by Major League Baseball’s official version of what Robinson accomplished, doesn’t speak to any of that.

Pearlman may have good reason to dislike Bonds personally. But, that’s all this piece is - personal animus dressed up as an argument on principle.

Imus Coverage - Wrapping Up

It’s become an increasingly common point of discussion to link the Imus firing to the dismissal of all charges in the Duke Lacrosse case. I was not yet blogging when, just over a year ago, allegations emerged from an African-American escort/dancer that she had been gang raped at an off-campus party by members of the Duke University Lacrosse team. The case was problematic almost from the start. It emerged relatively early on that the witness had a troubled past, including a previous unproved allegation of sexual assault, that there was no DNA evidence linking the accused to the alleged crimes and that the DA, Mike Nifong, had acted in a reckless manner, publicly and repeatedly vilifying the accused before he had amassed convincing evidence against them. Almost from the first, Nifong’s critics accused him of pushing this case in order to aid in his re-election campaign in a city with a substantial African American voting population. Whether this is true, or whether Nifong’s ultimate re-election hinged on African American support, I don’t know. But, whatever the motive for his conduct, the misconduct hearing he now faces appears well-deserved. My thought when Nifong first brought the case was that a DA would not pursue such a case unless he really thought he could get a conviction. And, as I’ve noted previously, the New York Times, in a long article last July, after the case had already begun to unravel, reviewed in detail the case file and found that there was a basis for moving forward, even without the DNA evidence. But, the accuser’s changing stories, the lack of DNA evidence, the incontrovertible alibi of one of the three accused and the fact that Nifong himself was so obviously incapable of acting impartially about this case meant that it just didn’t have a leg to stand on. We’ve all known for months that eventual dismissal was the likely outcome.

The inter-weaving of this story with the Imus story comes not only from the timing of the firing and case dismissal, within twenty four hours of one another. It also stems from the intense focus on the role that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson played in the public unraveling of Imus. In my earlier Imus posts this week, I maintained that the lumping of Jackson and Sharpton on this issue is curious, since they’ve played very different roles in the controversy - Sharpton a relatively significant one, Jackson much less of one. But, the two have also been lumped together in the linking of the Imus imbroglio with the Duke Lacrosse case. Beginning Thursday night, when I heard Adam Gold on 850 the buzz in Raleigh (and almost all of his callers), there was a trope repeated endlessly over the next couple of days: when are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson going to apologize to the falsely accused Duke Lacrosse players? Gold himself asked that question throughout the evening, though he answered it by saying that he wasn’t going to hold his breath. But, between Gold and his callers, there was repeated goading directed at the two activists for having come down to North Carolina, stirred the pot, agitated for the conviction of the players and for having vilified those players - (in some versions calling them devils - and not Blue Devils). Gold, I should note, still believes that something very ugly likely happened on the night of March 13, 2006 - that the accuser was likely mistreated (and no one disputes that racial epithets were directed at both women involved in the party), felt genuinely threatened and may have been a victim of what we would call ’sexual harassment.” (a view of the situation that seems plausible to me). But, Gold noted, this is still a far cry from rape and therefore, a terrible miscarriage of justice.

In any event, some variation on the theme of Jackson and Sharpton needing to apologize aired repeatedly on many sports media. Jason Whitlock who has become a media darling as America’s favorite new spokesman on what ails Black America, told Colin Cowherd that Sharpton and Jackson were “ambulance chasers” and “terrorists” (yes, he used that word) and told Cowherd’s audience that “Jesse went down to Duke and stirred in that mess…and I am not saying that Jesse is totally responsible…Mike Nifong is responsible too.”

And, then voice rising in anger, he said:

“have we had an hour long press conference putting these people up on a cross yet…they faced rape charges for a year based on the word of two people with no credibility. And, Jesse Jackson went down there and called people out and offered this woman a scholarship when anybody with a brain, any grown man over 21 with a brain, I mean come on, you’re talking about college kids versus escorts…come on, if this had been black players at Georgetown versus two white escorts, would anyone have believed that story…it was terribly easy to call this…has jesse offered them an apology…” (Whitlock made almost the same point to Tucker Carlson onCarlson’s MSNBC program. He also attacked Sharpton and Jackson during a debate with Sharpton on the Today show Friday morning. I don’t share The Big Lead’s characterization of who got the better of whom in that exchange, but here’s their account, including a transcript of the segment).

Michael Kay, of ESPN radio in New York, also angrily decried the double standard at work in Imus’ firing and asked: “has Al Sharpton apologized to the three kids at Duke? Remember, he was front and center down there when the three kids got charged.”

Kay was, I should note, more worked up about the “gutless” behavior of CBS for waiting eight days and a mass bail-out by corporate sponsors before deciding to act on its supposed “revulsion” at Imus’ comments. But, his rhetorical question about Sharpton echoed, as I’ve noted, a sentiment raised by almost every commentator and caller I heard between Thursday afternoon and late Friday.

I should mention, too, that even before commentators started questioning whether Sharpton and Jackson would apologize to the Duke Lacrosse players, many were, following Whitlock’s lead, asking why they haven’t made a big deal out of the misogyny and incivil language of rap music. To give one of countless examples, On Mike and Mike Friday morning, in an interview otherwise devoted to discussing Jackie Robinson, Peter Gammons weighed in on Imus by telling Greenie and Golic that he wished “certain African American leaders” paid more attention to offensive lyrics in rap music.
Interestingly, a few minutes after Gammons went off the air, Greenie was dismissive of this line of attack:

“There are some who are now saying, well why aren’t Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson going after the rappers. Well…I don’t know whether they are or aren’t…the point of it is this. Outrage is a purely subjective emotion and it is not outrageous to suggest that Al Sharpton may or may not have been outraged by what Don Imus said and is not outraged by what is said on an album…or CD, whether it’s Snoop Dogg, or 50-cent, or Jay-Z…The Janet Jackson episode is a perfect example…I wasn’t outraged by it, you weren’t outraged by it…and some people were. But, if you’re one of the people who’s emailing this show saying why isn’t anybody doing anything about this - why aren’t you? If you’re outraged, go do it. What happened to Imus is that some people were outraged by it, they did somehting about it, and that’s how things get done…”

Greenie also addressed directly Jason Whitlock’s question/challenge about why Sharpton and Jackson didn’t talk about rap music:

“I’ve already answered that question, Jason, because outrage is a selective feeling…you don’t have to be upset about the rappers in order to be upset about Imus.”

I mention Greenie’s comments because he was virtually alone among mainstream sports media in not having presumed to know whether Sharpton or Jackson had or hadn’t spoken out about rap music. Whitlock, to take one example, has been particularly intent on substituting assertion for argument and innuendo for analysis when it comes to Jackson and Sharpton.

I did about two minutes of googling earlier today, and here’s one account I found (from the right-wing Newsmax), from a speech Sharpton gave to the Urban League in 2005:

“Sharpton also took aim at black popular culture. Noting that in some U.S. cities, black male unemployment exceeds 50 percent, Sharpton said black music and movies only aggravate the situation.

“We come out in response to that with movies like (the 2005) “Hustle and Flow” and tell our kids that the personification of black men is a black pimp of a white prostitute that wants to be a rapper who shoots the rapper and at the end of the movie, [a] black woman he had as his prostitute has his baby and the white prostitute becomes the head of the record company and makes the money while he’s in jail. That don’t make sense,” Sharpton said to applause.

“People emulate what they see …We cannot succumb to a generation that acts like it’s all right to celebrate being down. It’s one thing to be down, it’s another thing to celebrate being down,” he explained.

Referring to gangster rappers, Sharpton said, “We’ve gone from ‘black and proud’ to groups now calling themselves “Niggers with an attitude.”

Sharpton told the panel discussion of how he has confronted rappers about their lyrics only to be told that the rappers simply “reflect the times.” Sharpton said black art and culture used to project its “hopes for the future.”

“In slavery we wasn’t singing, ‘you a low down cotton pickin ho.’ That would’ve reflected the times,” he said to more laughter and applause.

“In the civil rights era, we sang “We shall overcome” we didn’t sing ‘You in the back of the bus, got gum on your show, no good MF.’ I mean we’ve been down before. We never romanticized it and put melody to it and acted like it was all right,” he added.

I am willing to bet that this is not the only statement Sharpton’s ever made on the subject and, on Friday, after the Imus firing, Sharpton promised to take the fight to all media that use degrading language. And, in fact, Golic offered a criticism of Sharpton and Jackson Friday morning that completely undercut the claim that they never spoke out about rap music: that, in fact, a criticism Golic said he heard was that both men had repeatedly condemned hip hop and hadn’t accomplished much, so had decided to bail on that cause for the easier pickings of the Imus situation. But, of course, the Imus case took just over a week to play out - hardly a basis for saying that the two bailed out on the cause of fighting offensive music lyrics.

Inspired by Greenie to ask - rather than assert - what role Jackson and Shaprton played in the Duke case, since Whitlock, Kay, Gold and many others asserted that they played a central (and inflammatory) role, I started to hunt around to look. And, I confess, I was shocked by the result: neither Al Sharpton nor Jesse Jackson ever came to North Carolina at any time after the accusations were first made. In fact, in April 2006, when Sharpton was contemplating coming to Durham to get involved in protests, local community leaders specifically asked Sharpton not to because they thought his presence would unnecessarily inflame the situation. And, being the media-hound, hothead and “terrorist” that Jason Whitlock thinks he is - Sharpton agreed. For his part, Jesse Jackson never came either and when, in April 2006, was asked about his plans to do so - said he didn’t have any, because he was involved at that time in projects related to Hurricane Katrina and immigration (because, again, Jesse never involves himself in substantive issues of real concern to people in tough circumstances). Jackson did famously offer to pay the college tuition of the accuser, even if it turned out she was making a false accusation. Here’s what Jackson told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now in April 2006:

Well, you know, the circumstances surrounding the Duke case are still being revealed by the prosecutor. What I do know is I have compassion on the young woman. And if her argument is, as she tries to pay her way through school and sustain her two children, that she had to strip and to bare her body as a way of making a living, let’s relieve her of that burden. While there are those who would say, Dont abort; adopt, I would say, you know, Don’t strip; scholarship. Let’s get her a scholarship and a job, that she may be able to work her way out of the hole without going deeper into it. It is unfortunate that we’re so tolerant of violence against women, and that becomes another reason, I think, to stand with her until we find out what’s happening.

Just out of curiosity, does this sound like a hotheaded, inflaming terrorist to you? It’s actually, even for sports media, a stunning display of negligence and professional incompetence - to actually fabricate a role for Jackson and Sharpton in the Duke case that they simply did not play. And, by the way, isn’t the role imputed to these two men not itself a sign of racism - that these hotheaded Black leaders must have engaged in certain activities because they’re hot headed Black leaders? So much so that we don’t need to find out anything about what they actually do and don’t do, because we can just assume the worst about them at all times.

In fact, the very sober-minded Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an African American writer who is often critical of various aspects of Black culture, had this to say about the Duke case last December:

There was a lesson too for black leaders. To their credit, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t stampede to the barricades and demand conviction and severe punishment for the accused assailants. In the past they have done that in other hot ticket racially tinged cases. Who can forget Tawana Brawley and the black students that tore up a football stadium in Decatur, Illinois a few years back? Sharpton and Jackson instantly screamed racism. Every time they did, they hopelessly muddled the case, and inflame racial tensions. In the Duke case, a reflexive shout of racism would have further discredited the legitimate fight against sexual victimization. Because of that, black leaders should have gone one step further and urged the Duke protesters to cool their rhetoric until all the facts were in. They didn’t.

I need to return briefly to Whitlock’s comments, quoted above. Whitlock is making a fascinating spectacle of himself (incredibly, he was reduced to telling Cowherd, unprompted, that he loved Black people) and seems to outdo himself with each passing day. More specifically, two issues merit attention. The first is Whitlock’s statement about the martyrdom of the three Duke players - David Evans, Reade Seligman and Colin Finnerty. That they were falsely accused of rape is terrible. But, Whitlock’s comment suggests not merely that these three men were unfairly and grossly singled out for unwarranted legal persecution. Rather, Whitlock intimates, that they represent something larger. But, what is that? That well-off white men suffer unfairly in our legal system? If Whitlock believes that, he’s genuinely suffering from a break with reality. As wrong as Nifong was, the context that is missing from discussions of the case today is that the events of that night did take place in an ugly, racially charged atmosphere that led many people, understandably, to see in the case the playing out of long-standing patterns of abuse and power in America. And, only the fantastically disillusioned could imagine that white males, especially those from well-off families and privileged universities, are somehow more persecuted, more degraded and more mistreated than African American women who are selling their bodies for a living. Did many people rush to judgment? Absolutely. Did many individuals read into the situation a history of degradation and power imbalance that led to that rush to judgment. It would seem so. But, can we please stop accusing the “Black community” of self-pitying martyrdom while at the same time allowing to go unchecked this whining self-pitying by many whites in the media that they are the unfair victims of a “double standard.” And, on the issue of a rush to judgment, that’s not something that sports media, in general, have generally cared about whenever a professional athlete is mentioned in any connection with a criminal proceeding, even if it later turns out that the athlete in question was not found guilty of any wrongdoing at all. What happened to Dale Davis last summer is a good example. What happened to Fred Weary, detailed a few months back by Dwil, is another.

Whitlock’s other noteworthy comment was that the word of college guys should always be taken over that of strippers. He’s essentially saying out of one side of his mouth that these boys were persecuted because of a facts-be-damned attitude pervaded by unfair stereotypes about what they represent demographically. And, out of the other side of his mouth, Whitlock insists that they should have been taken at their word (and the women disbelieved) precisely because of who they all were, demographically, even before we knew the facts. “Knee-jerk” has become a Whitlock trademark. And, given the media exposure he’s getting, I guess it’s working for him.

Imus Coverage - Part II

I said yesterday that I haven’t heard Imus traffic in overtly racist stuff over the past few years, but Imus’ history is clear, as Dwil points out today in his Whitlock takedown (more below) and as is clear from the damning transcript from Sixty Minutes about which Bob Herbert wrote this morning. Furthermore, as Bryan Burwell, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch told Jim Rome on Tuesday, Imus’ producer Bernie McGuirk, who is unashamedly racist, has gotten off scott-free in all this. And, Imus is, of course, responsible for whatever McGuirk, or Sid Rosenberg or anyone else on the show has said in this vein over the years - it’s Imus’ show.

I mention this because it makes the body-of-work vs. single-bad-act defense non-sensical.

As I am sure most of you know, NBC has pulled the plug on Imus’ MSNBC simulcasts. And, so no one misses the point – this was the market at work. Sponsors started pulling ads, and next thing you know…The government didn’t force this decision, and unless a relevant group in the market-place had raised enough of a stink about the content of a show, this wouldn’t have happened. I am emphasizing this point because there’s been so much effort to characterize as pernicious the “interference” of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (about which I will have LOTS to say below). But, they have no power to shut down a show other than their ability to persuade and signal to relevant actors in the market place that supporting a particular product, in this case, Imus, might no longer be worth their while. I don’t personally believe that the market should be the arbiter of all values in our society, but that’s a premise that most people in the world of sports commentary take for granted and never question. So, I think it’s fair to ask – why is such an exercise of marketplace power out of bounds now?

OK. A few folks to hit today, starting with Jim Rome. There was a time when I couldn’t stand Romey. I thought he brought nothing to the table but a loud-mouthed attitude. I didn’t see the insight, the intelligence, or even the passion for the games themselves. Instead, I saw a guy who seemed to have two goals:

1)    sell his brashness
2)    demonstrate to everybody that he was always in possession of the most current slang.

Without getting into a whole history of my changing feelings about Rome, I can say that I like him now. He’s matured, he is smart, and he often brings a perspective to sports radio that I think is refreshing. And, he does good interviews.

On Tuesday, Jim Rome spoke insightfully to the Imus issue (I can only paraphrase since I was driving when he was on the radio). He made two key points:

1) Imus has to know that times have changed. During the segment I heard, Rome wasn’t saying that in the “life-is-so-unfair-that-my-racist-statements-have-been-selectively-singled-out” vein that we’ve heard so much of these past few days. Instead, Rome was stating, in very matter-of-fact terms, a reality. There is heightened sensitivity to and awareness of the use of derogatory language and more people are listening and able to convey those things in real time. Does it put radio hosts with big (and sometimes not so big) audiences under a microscope? Yes, it does. But, Rome essentially argued, that the price of doing business nowadays and if Imus didn’t realize that, that was his bad.

2) Rome also addressed the body-of-work issue. Rome pointed out that he himself has done thousands of interviews and that he’s worked really hard every day for years to bring his audience a good show. But, Rome said, when many people think of him, they still think of one interview: the one he did 15 or so years ago with quarterback Jim Everett, whom Rome kept baiting by calling him “Chris” as in Chris Evert (because, if you’re a female, you’re less of a person, of course). Rome said that, of course, he wishes that that’s not how people remembered him, that he regrets that interview and is embarrassed by it. But, he noted, that’s the way these things work sometimes, and you have to live with that.

On the other side of the galaxy in a land, far, far, away, the WEEI guys really outdid themselves in their discussion of Imus. This is all courtesy of Big Chown Dog, who gave the following account of their take (since I can’t say it better than he did, here’s what BCD wrote to me):

“heard some interesting stuff on EEI this morning.  John Dennis read Jason Whitlock’s
column on Imus.  They used this as a starting point to go off on the Rutgers women.  Saying they were guilty of ‘extortion’
and are anything but victims.  Where it got interesting is that they said that they
couldn’t possibly be victims because they certainly had acts like 50 Cent on their
iPods.  And that sort of ‘vile crap’ was far more damaging to them than what Imus said.
This is funny because on Monday (as any Monday following an episode of the Sopranos)
they  talked about the Sopranos.  What Dennis and Callahan like about the  Sopranos is
all of the killing.  What they hate about it is stuff like Tony talking to Dr. Melfi, or
Tony doing anything that basically doesn’t involve killing.  Go to their webpage and
look at their  “favorite television shows” - You find 24, The Shield and The Sopranos. Apparently the culture of violence espoused in these shows is fine for young and old, but hip hop culture is ‘vile crap.’ Hmmm.”

Hmm, indeed. Do I hear Dennis and Callahan right? That anyone who has ever consumed a cultural product that has violent and offensive content is, presumably, heretofore fair game for any insult whatsoever. By that standard, Dennis and Callahan would have to agree that they themselves are fair game, about their backgrounds, their families, or whatever, since they obviously consume offensive cultural products. Am I missing something?

A couple of points here about Whitlock. It’s worth pointing out that the “50 Cent” line comes from Whitlock’s column (he actually speculated that “at least one” of the Rutgers women likely had 50-cent in her Ipod. And, why find out when you can merely speculate?) The Big Sexy must be heartened to know that he is feeding talking points to two guys like Dennis and Callahan determined to don their own mantle of victimhood because, God forbid, it’s become harder to make racist, sexist or homophobic comments without repercussions.

But, more importantly, like many other commentators over the past few days, Whitlock attacked both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They’re an easy target in the sports commentary universe, a world of easy living where the only acceptable kind of shrill is that which emanates from the mouths of the commentators themselves. Decry racism – you’re a shrill attention-getter. Whine all day about the evils of rap music – then you’re a stand up guy “telling it like it is.”

Whitlock first complained that he was pissed at Imus (whom he clearly dislikes, by the way) for allowing Blacks to allow themselves to be conned:
“You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.”

Whitlock backed off from the “lucrative” comment for a moment:

“I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.”

But, it turns out, this was a disingenuous disclaimer, since Whitlock views l’affaire Imus thusly:

“It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.”

And, in case you missed the point that Whitlock claimed he wasn’t making:

“No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.”

And speaking of wallowing in victimhood, this last paragraph is a classic. Other than child pornography and Bin Laden, I can scarcely think of a phenomenon in American life that is more easily (and frequently) vilified than rap music from across the political spectrum. Whitlock may be right to criticize some of its content, but the idea that doing so is a courageous stand, one that Jackson and Sharpton are too cowardly to make, is just so absurd that I can’t believe that Whitlock could really believe it. You can say what you want about Jackson, but Jason Whitlock could live to be five hundred years old and he won’t have taken a fraction of the “dangerous” stances that Jackson has in his life. Whitlock is preaching the evils of rap music and gangsta/prison culture to an overwhelmingly white audience that hates it all and, incredibly, he thinks, by implication, that his stance is “dangerous.”

It’s taken many remarkable inversions for the groups with the most economic and political power in America to reframe themselves as beleaguered victims, as many white radio talk show hosts have done, for example. But, it’s quite a spectacle to see Whitlock donning the same mantel of martyrdom that he decries in others.

In addition to Whitlock’s implicit self-pitying, there are, in fact, multiple ironies in his condemnation of either or both Jackson and Sharpton (a condemnation, as I’ve noted, widely voiced in recent days, including by Mike and the Mad Dog and Dan Patrick and Charles Barkley):

1) many of the people doing the accusing (and Imus himself) all make their living by writing or saying things that will get them a public platform, attention that they parlay into a very nice living. The commodity they sell is their ability to get attention. That already puts them uncomfortably close to doing what they accuse Sharpton and Jesse Jackson of doing. This leaves aside the question of what the actual financial benefit is to Jackson, for example, in this case. If someone can explain that to me, I’ll be impressed.

2) related to point one, none of the folks I’ve heard complain about Jackson and Sharpton in this context has, to my knowledge, ever articulated a sustained critique of a society organized around market principles – where the first, unmistakable principle is - whatever sells has value. We might like to tell ourselves otherwise - but surveying the cultural and political landscape, does anyone really want to argue that our most famous, powerful and rich public figures are really our best and brightest? Now, there is a complication here: the sports world probably comes closer to being a real meritocracy than any other realm of American life, and it is a premise of sports discourse that the best athletes are the ones who rise highest in their chosen field of endeavor. No one could as confidently make the same arguments about pop culture, for example, unless someone really believes that Brittany Spears or Sanjaya is truly a great musical talent.

Likewise, when it comes to prominent sports commentators, like their professional cousins, the political punditocracy, the prominence of many in the field has no necessary relation to their intellectual abilities, the seriousness of their analysis or their dedication to ferreting out the truth. Some possess those qualities and rise on the basis of real talents. Others have gotten where they are by being obnoxious and loud-mouthed and, in the process, have managed to cultivate a following (see, for example, the typical guest on Around the Horn).

If you don’t have a problem with that inescapable reality, what exactly is the basis of the
condemnation of Jackson and Sharpton for knowing how to bring attention to their causes?

3) It’s absolutely remarkable that Jason Whitlock has assumed for himself the true servant of the social and economic interests of the Black community, in contrast to Jackson and Sharpton.

I have heard Jesse Jackson speak in person and through the media many times and I am willing to venture a guess that he has spoken about the pernicious ills of economic racism as often as any public figure in American life over the past forty years. Jackson has fought against and decried the structural roots of poverty countless throughout his entire public life. He has called for an overhaul of the spending priorities of our government endlessly, campaigned repeatedly for universal health care, greater commitment to education and social services and talked often about the scourge of violence in African American communities. That Whitlock could write as if he doesn’t know this is a nothing less than a shocking display of ignorance, especially from a man who has now assumed for himself the role of courageous spokesman for the real interests of Black America.

That Whitlock thinks rap music is the primary cause of the violence, poverty, deprivation and poor health of Black America is shallow and ill thought out. That he thinks he’s worked harder or should be taken more seriously on those issues than Jackson (or Sharpton, about whom I could say many of the same things) is a disgrace.

By the way, I am Jewish and, I’ll be honest, I still remember the Hymietown remark that Jackson uttered 23 years ago. I have plenty of critical things to say about him and I’m no Jackson apologist. But, Whitlock’s attack here is gutless and more of a distraction from the real problems facing the underprivileged in America than anything that Jackson has done in this episode (and frankly, though I know Sharpton’s been a player in this, I have seen and heard little from Jesse, so I am not sure why he’s even being lumped in here).

4) That the mainstream simply ignores the countless speeches and campaigns that Jackson (and Sharpton) have launched on the structural causes of poverty and social decay in America is the real issue here. If the media only pays attention to Jesse Jackson during one of these frenzied moments when, as my buddy Pete C. calls - we have a “gotcha” moment with a major personality - what does that say about Jesse Jackson? My answer: nothing. Jackson and Sharpton have each spent years trying to bring attention to a raft of issues that are at the core of the impoverishment and violence that plagues Black America. That Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, for example, never give Al Sharpton’s work in those areas a second thought, and only become aware of him because the media spotlight shines on him in certain moments has nothing of significance to do with Al Sharpton. It has to do with what the media calls “newsworthy” and it only illuminates how Mike and Chris, and Patrick, and Barkley and whomever, see the world.

Alright, I am looking forward to returning to complaining about media coverage concerning something more mundane, like whether Yankee radio announcers John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman have a clue as to who is regarded as a good prospect and who isn’t. (Answer: not so much).

Imus Coverage - Part I

There’s tons and tons of Imus stuff, so I’ll do this in a couple of installments. I heard him briefly on his radio show this morning while driving into work, and he was again apologizing for what he did. (His two-week suspension begins Monday). In a somewhat odd tangent, he noted that his regular sports correspondent, the FAN’s Chris Carlin, is the play-by-play voice for Rutgers football. This, Imus suggested, was another “irony” in this story, because “it’s not as if we don’t have a rooting interest in Rutgers.” But, whether the Imus gang roots for Rutgers football strikes me as having little to nothing to do with whether they would root for women’s basketball, a sport I have never heard them discuss prior to the fateful conversation of a week ago. (And, I do listen fairly regularly, though usually only in 10-15 minutes chunks after I’ve dropped my daughter off at school in the morning).

There are few perspectives worth noting here. First, is William Rhoden’s Monday piece in the New York Times. Imus’ remarks have mostly been framed as a racial issue, and for understandable reasons. But, of course, they weren’t merely racist. They were also sexist. Rhoden’s focus, atypical in the coverage I’ve seen and heard is on the racist AND sexist dimensions of the remarks.

After noting that he happened to be in Chapel Hill last Wednesday talking to a law school class about Title IX and about the gains women have made in collegiate athletics, Rhoden wrote:

“On the day I was speaking in Chapel Hill, Don Imus, the national radio host, referred to the women on the Rutgers basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s.” The remarks were part of off-handed comments about the N.C.A.A. championship game the night before between Rutgers and Tennessee.

For all the ugliness of the remarks, I’m encouraged by the controversy they’ve unleashed. So many of our young people, especially women, especially African-American women, have been raised in cocoons, led to believe that sexism and racism have significantly subsided. This naïveté is so entrenched that the threshold to insult has become higher.

There have been calls for Imus to be fired. (Full disclosure: After I wrote a column critical of Imus in 1999, I was told that he referred to me as a “quota hire.” Since then, he has apparently praised my work, even if he has declined to review my books.) But there are larger issues, and chief among them is how to close the historic and deeply rooted gap of consciousness and compassion between black and white women.

Historically, white feminists, and black men, have drawn a counterproductive line in respect to African-American women — a line that has compromised the war on sexism and racism. The author Paula Giddings wrote, “We have been perceived as token women in black texts and token blacks in feminist texts.”

Imus’s comments highlighted age-old, deep-rooted stereotypes that seem to surface whenever African-American women excel in sport.

Beginning in the mid-1930s, when African-American women began to excel in track and field, their success was seen through a mainstream prism of success in a “mannish” sport and reinforced disparaging stereotypes.

Rhoden also notes the overtly sexist dimensions of the remarks:

On the surface, Imus’s remarks were aimed at African-American women. But as Greene points out: “No woman who participates in sport, and no mother or father who encourages and supports that participation, can escape their animus. Beyond his bold and overt racism lie assumptions about the proper bounds of femininity, assumptions that Title IX and other civil rights legislation sought to shatter.”

As first reported yesterday, Imus will meet with the Rutgers women, following a request he made Monday to do so in a lengthy mea culpa on his own show (which I’ll get to shortly). Rutgers’ coach, Vivian Stringer, appearing with Mike and Mike this morning, described Imus’ remarks as racist and sexist, but was careful to distinguish between characterizing his remarks as such and characterizing the man himself as a racist or a sexist and said the team would withhold judgment until after they met with him. This distinction goes to the heart of Imus’ defense of himself and his allies defense of him: that a good man said something really bad. I’ll note here that while I have not really heard Imus traffic in racist remarks over the past few years (prior to last Wednesday) when I have listened to the show, I can say unequivocally that he has trafficked in sexist remarks (people can dislike Hilary Clinton for any number of reasons, but the bile that Imus spews when he speaks of her is, in my view, indisputably informed by an underlying misogyny). That’s neither here or nor there, but I mention this partly to reinforce Rhoden’s point above – it’s clear that Imus has an “issue” with women who don’t fit within certain acceptable “bounds of feminity.” And, while Imus himself has only “tip-toed up to the line” on race (as the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Claire Smith put it to Mike and Chris yesterday on the FAN), prior to last week (again, at least in more recent years) other members of his crew, especially his obviously racist producer Bernie McGuirk, have clear walked all over that line.

Last Friday, Imus issued a formal apology. But, the issue was just starting to blow up, and Imus clearly felt compelled to do much more significant damage control by Monday morning. (The FAN material I reference here is all available in audio clips on the station’s website). He began by explaining why he was explaining himself:

“I am not inclined to weasel out of what I said…but the context for this show is that we make fun of everybody…we make fun of me, sometimes to a vicious degree…Does that make it OK to make fun of these women? Of course not. But that’s the context.” That phrase, “that’s the context” is one that Imus used over and over again in the twenty minutes or so that I heard.

Imus continued:

“But, that’s got to change, because some people don’t deserve to be made fun of, like these young women…These women - they played for the national championship. They beat Duke, then they played Tennessee, they don’t need me to try to be funny about them.

Imus was also adamant when he said the following:“It’s a repugnant suggestion that because we make fun of everybody, it’s OK to make fun of them. Because I call my wife a green ‘ho, that doesn’t make it OK to [say what I said]? Of course not.”

Imus clearly spent much of the weekend keeping counsel with several prominent African American leaders (including the politician Harold Ford, who has long been an I-Fave) out of which came his decision both to reach out to the Rutgers women, and to go on Al Sharpton’s show, which he also did on Monday.

Imus described his conversation with one of those leaders, the preacher DeForest Soaries (who is, apparently, Vivian Stringer’s minister):

“I talked to Deforest Sawyer last night for forty five minutes. He’s calling for me to be fired, but he’s a good man, a brilliant man and a great evangelist and he said the tragedy of this is that, he said, ‘I know you’re a good man, and you said this, you said this, what are they saying. What are the people on the right saying?”

It’s often (though not always) hard to judge what’s in other people’s hearts and minds and listening to Imus on Monday, I am inclined to think that he was, as he said, genuinely embarrassed and humiliated. Was this so for a mix of reasons? Probably. My own view is that Imus’ awakening this week came after it became clear that he might be in jeopardy of losing his show, a possibility that, as recently as last Friday, I don’t think he considered. But, he did seem especially heartfelt when he recounted the following observation from Sawyer:

‘And, you have to understand that [Black] people believe that White people don’t like them, that no matter how good the person is, at some point it comes out, like it did with you and that just confirms what they [Black folks] think.”

But, Imus insisted: “these women need to know that I am a good person that said a bad thing. There’s a big difference.”

What followed was a long recitation of the work that Imus and his wife do at the Imus ranch where, for ten years, they have been taking in very sick and often terminally ill children for ten days of activities, enrichment, etc. Imus was at pains to point out that many of these children are minorities, including a significant number of African Americans, all of whom Don and his wife love equally. While Imus was also at pains to point out that this absolutely did not make what he said OK, it should provide a context for people to judge whether he’s really a racist.

Imus’ own take on his remarks, however self-serving they might also at been, compared favorably to those of Joe Ovious, local radio host on 620 The Bull here in the Triangle. While Imus was delivering his remarks, Ovious was arguing that he didn’t really see what the big deal was, since Imus says stuff like this all the time on his show. Ovious repeated that he found it “interesting” how “all of a sudden” things get picked up and did, properly, note previous racist remarks that emanated from Imus’ show. When Ovious uses the word “interesting” he means “suspicious” as in – everybody’s got an angle. So, from Ovious’ point of view, this is good publicity for Rutgers and the story is being pushed by ESPN because ESPN owns women’s college basketball so they’re invested in this. I am not sure that women’s college basketball will gain a single extra viewer from this story, but it’s clear from their own statements that what was supposed to have been the highlight of their athletic careers – their triumphant return back to Rutgers after their unexpected run to the championship game – was hijacked within 24 hours by this story. And, it’s equally clear from their statements that none of them has found this whole incident to be anything but disruptive and unfortunate.

But, beyond getting the motives wrong, Ovious is frankly being a weasel here, falling back on the cynic’s easy dodge – nobody’s motives are pure – in order to be able to avoid actually having to make a judgment.

Mike and the Dog, both of whom are friends with I-Man and periodically appear on his show, were critical of Imus’ remarks and felt that he deserved some punishment. They also agreed that the story took too long to get off the ground.

But, they seemed as agitated as anything by the presence of Al Sharpton in this affair. MB tells me they made much of the way Sharpton has insinuated himself into the controversy in their initial remarks on Monday (they were off Friday and say they didn’t hear about the comments until Thursday). Among their claims was that Sharpton was grandstanding to promote his own agenda (though in subsequent conversations, they never spelled out what that agenda was) and that he was really just trying to promote his fledgling radio show (which Francesa noted, does not have a New York affiliate).

In an interview with Rutgers AD Bob Mulcahy yesterday, Francesa went off on Sharpton:

“to me, they (the players) get lost in the shuffle here, and it’s about people on TV, people like Al Sharpton making noise, and I think that’s wrong… it shouldn’t be about people furthering their own cause…people will say you have to take care of society, but before you can take care of society, you have to take care of this one issue. Because no one can change society in one day and if Al Sharpton thinks he can do that he should go and take all the rap records out of the record stores…If he wants to talk about civility, we can start right there.”

Francesa’s diatribe followed a pointed question from Russo, asking whether Mulcahy contacted any Black leaders, “whether a preacher in New Jersey or Al Sharpton” to ask one of them to represent the university. Mulcahy responded that Soaries was the only person “of that sort” that he spoke to.

Let me pause here to note that Mike can’t possibly be suggesting that Imus’ insult only concerned the Rutgers women. You can think what you want of Sharpton, but the fact is that he gets coverage because he us understood to speak for some non-trivial part of our population. Mike and Chris can whine all day about whom, if anybody, should be the proper spokespeople for various groups in society. But, the phrase “nappy headed hos” obviously doesn’t only concern the Rutgers women, though they were the direct targets of the statement and it’s a shocking display of arrogance by each of them to presume that they and not Rutgers, or African Americans, or women, or whomever, should decide who speaks for those groups.

To her immense credit, the aforementioned Smith of the Inquirer took Mike and Chris on directly about Sharpton when she followed Mulcahy on the air. As soon as they welcomed her on the show and she finished saying what a big fan of theirs she was, Smith suggested they follow their arguments to their logical conclusions, noting that just like Mike and Chris, Sharpton has a radio show, and just as they had Mulcahy on to pursue the story, Sharpton had I-Man on to pursue the story.

Russo responded, pathetically, I might add, that there was no point in having Imus on because he was already on his own radio show for five hours that morning and you could just get the story straight from him. I hope you’re as amazed as I am that a long-time radio host could fail to distinguish between monologue and conversation as forms of communication, or to assume that what Imus would say of his own accord would be exactly what he might say in a contentious dialogue.

But, Smith was unmoved by this rejoinder, noting that the Rutgers AD and women had just been on TV themselves for much of the day, presumably obviating, by Russo’s logic, the need to bring Mulcahy on the radio to repeat what he had already said. Mike said that Mulcahy asked to be on his show (though, of course, Imus asked to be on Sharpton’s show) and pressed the point that Sharpton was really in this to boost his “fledgling” radio program. When Smith responded that this is what everybody did in radio, Francesa said “when [Sharpton] makes his statements as a spokesman for the Black community, that should not be economic…” But, Smith was ready for that one, too, noting that you can’t easily distinguish the two and pointing out that coach Stringer had said that the relevant color here is “green” – that someone like Imus has gotten away with what he has for so long because he generates the revenue that he does. (I would note here too that, while I agree with Dwil’s comments about a double standard at work that gets someone like Michael Ray Richardson fired while Imus got two weeks, the financial dimension is important. FOX didn’t think twice about canning white broadcaster Steve Lyons last Fall, for example, because Lyons means nothing to them financially. That few African Americans have the kind of leverage that Don Imus has is itself a noteworthy point and an important way of understanding how race works indirectly in this country, even when it’s not overtly on display, as it is in the present Imus case).

To their credit, Mike and Chris did recognize when they were being overmatched, as they were by Smith, and the tone of the conversation changed. Near the end of their conversation Francesa did ask, pushing a familiar line, whether the “body of work” should override one comment in the case of Imus. Smith said that her own response to Imus’ remarks would be that she would no longer listen to the show and argued pointedly that: “I think denigrating anyone for the purpose of making money is disgusting” and, in the process, threw the hip-hop issue back in Mike’s face, by arguing that whether it was Imus, or Howard Stern or hip-hop, ALL of which denigrate people to make money, she found it repugnant.

I mention this point in part because hip-hop/prison culture, as Jason Whitlock puts it, has been very much under the micro-scope recently as a central source of the ills facing our incivil society. And, in the next installment, I’ll discuss the WEEI boys’ distinctive take on the controversy, I’ll note how selective is the concern of sports commentators, Black and White, with violent forms of cultural production. But, as a hint, I’ll say here that Mike and Chris love The Sopranos, probably the single show in television history that has most normalized vicious violence, if not glorified it. ( I am, for the record, a big fan of the show myself. I am less of a fan, however, of locating in hip-hop the primary source of violence in America).

OK, before I wrap this installment (with Jim Rome, WEEI and others coming in the next one), three points:

1) about Sharpton, Mike and Chris  have it backwards. Al Sharpton can’t (and didn’t) force anyone to come on his show. Imus came on because Sharpton now has leverage that makes his show worth coming on. This is every bit the marketplace at work as Imus’ own success. No one is holding a gun to Imus’ head. The economic and market realities are that he needs to talk to Sharpton to save himself, and Sharpton’s gave him an opportunity to do so. That an Al Sharpton is in a position to have that kind of leverage is noteworthy, in my view. But, Al Sharpton does not have his leverage because he got a hand out. Like it or not, he’s cultivated and earned his audience and his influence. Welcome to 2007, Mike and Chris.

2) I am ambivalent about Imus’ suspension. On the one hand, two weeks is obviously a slap on the wrist, no more than a vacation that a suspension, if one were to be given, should be longer – at least a month. And, a part of me thinks that firing Imus would have sent a worthwhile message – that part of the new marketplace reality, with all the attendant concerns about adverse publicity, is that you just can’t say shit like that anymore. On the other hand, as I have said countless times before, I am uncomfortable with people being fired for such remarks. Not because they necessarily deserve better, but because to do so feels like a way of sweeping a problem under a rug, rather than leaving it out there for people to have to chew on, debate, come to terms with.

3) The “body of work” argument, so easily offered to the Dom Imuses and Bob Ryans of the world, somehow never seems to apply to guys like Stephon Marbury. Hmm.

 

Purple Haze

Warning: this is kind of long.

From my DVR, an astonishing rant from Bill Walton on Friday morning with Mike Greenberg. Walton doesn’t engage in conversation so much as delivers extended, breathless monologues in which he clearly is more taken with his own flights of rhetorical fancy than he is committed to actually making any sense whatsoever.

If the goal is to spew as much purple prose as possible, Walton is the reigning champion of sports commentators. If, on the other hand, the goal is to make one logically coherent statement, Walton is quite a bit less successful.

The meat of Greenie and Walton’s “conversation” was about the decline of the Big Man in basketball, prompted by Greenie asking Walton whether he would have been the same player had he left college early, as great big men invariably do today.

Walton said no, of course, and offered this  assessment of the state of the big man today:

“the decline of the big man in basketball.. [compared to] when we used to have so many remarkable stars dominating the game is directly related to all the rule changes, including the cultural shift that doesn’t allow these young men to fulfill their dreams [because they leave college early].”

Then Walton offered a list of factors that are, in no particular order,  responsible for this change:

- they don’t go to college, they don’t learn how to practice, they  “don’t get touched by the master teachers”
- the three point shot has altered the role of the big man
- the changing structure of youth basketball, where the high school coach is no longer central to a player’s development, instead the money-driven AAU is central
- that there is a lack of team structure - you no longer have a coach  who says get that ball inside to a big man
- the guards are just jacking it up at the three point
- Shaq, who has changed basketball, “because he’s just scared all the  centers away”

Later, Walton reminisced wistfully about the late 1980s, when the game was dominated by great big men including Sampson, Olajuwon, Ewing and later David Robinson. And, then, in discussing Greg Oden, Walton blasted his coach Thad Matta, for under-utilizing him, calling him a huge “waste” of talent, and comparing Oden unfavorably to Noah, Horford and the Florida team in general, because Oden just “stood around” and was reactive and passive and “that’s not how you win.”

Finally, Walton offered this pearl of wisdom about life in general:

“ultimate success is from training your mind…and how to learn, how to think, how to build…they (the contemporary player) think it’s all about the physical nature of being tall…the greatest of champions, they know how to out-think their opponents…that’s how you learn how to beat the big man and the way you learn how to do that is from learning from the master teachers at the college level.”

Walton’s rant took seven minutes or so and I won’t take on everything he said (I do have to eat today), but let’s review some of the key claims, starting with Oden:

1) Walton’s views of Greg Oden

It’s true that Florida won the national championship, by beating Ohio State 84-75 last Monday. After any big game, it’s natural for sports analysts to look for factors that might explain the game’s outcome. This is called “analysis.” Walton, on the other hand, is not interested in “analysis.” He’s interested only in offering yet another extension on the single animating principle of his life which is, in a nutshell, that if you didn’t play for John Wooden, you are a lesser human being. Virtually everything that Bill Walton has to say about basketball will make more sense (relatively speaking, of course) if you keep that principle in mind.

So, what actually happened Monday night?

Oden was great. In fact, he’s the only guy who really showed up for OSU, other than Mike Conley, Jr. and he almost certainly played his best game of the season, finishing with 25 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks in 38 minutes. He was tired at the end, but that doesn’t change the fact of how good he was. Al Horford, one of Florida’s big men, played an excellent game for Florida, but he only shot 6-15, surely affected by Oden’s defensive presence. And Noah, whose praises Walton sang for how he “came out” in the title game, managed 8 points and 4 rebounds and did his best work cheerleading from the bench, since he was saddled with foul trouble. Why did Florida win? Pretty simple - actually. They buried an unconscious ten of eighteen three-pointers.

So, to review - OSU makes it all the way to the title game with a freshman-heavy team, its star center plays his best game of the season in the title game itself, and Big Red concludes that Oden was waste of talent, who played a reactive game and “stood around” Monday night. This is beneath coherence unless you remember Walton’s life rule: if you didn’t play for John Wooden, you’re a lesser person. Oden’s coach is Thad Matta, not John Wooden. Oden is almost surely leaving after one season, rather than staying in college and learning from a “master teacher” like Wooden. OSU lost the title game. Florida reminds Walton of some of his UCLA teams. Ipso facto, Oden’s a waste of talent who stood around Monday night. I warned you - it’s only relatively less non-sensical now, but you can, at least, grope your way toward parsing a “logic” from Walton if you keep the Wooden principle in mind.

2) The decline of the Big Man more generally.

As noted above, Walton rued the passing of the great era of big men in the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, when Sampson, Hakeem, Ewing and the Admiral patrolled the middle in the NBA. One dominant center that Walton left out from this era was Moses Malone, who led the 76ers to the 1983 title and was a force in the middle for a decade overlapping the emergence of the aforementioned foursome. Malone never went to college, so he’s inconvenient to mention here. But, let’s ask ourselves whether the foursome mentioned above are really products of “master teachers” in college. Ewing’s probably the most obvious example - he played for John Thompson, a highly respected coach who was himself a big man and has a Celtics’ pedigree from the Russell era to boot. Of course, Thompson was a coach for a quarter of a century and the only years he ever made the final four were during the three appearances during the Ewing era, so it’s not clear who made whom here. But, let’s grant Walton this one.

How about Sampson? Sampson was in some ways never a prototypical center and was only good for about three NBA seasons, so his inclusion here is a bit odd (Moses Malone, by contrast, was great for at least ten, and for five years after Sampson declined as a player). But, we’re playing along. So, who was Sampson’s coach? Terry Holland. Holland had a nice career, and made U Va. into a competitive program. But, master teacher? That’s a bit of a stretch. Olajuwon played for Guy Lewis, who had a long, successful career at the University of Houston. Of course, Lewis never won a national championship despite having a lot of talented players come through his program and I have never heard anyone apply the label “master teacher” to him either. And, finally, David Robinson who played at the Naval Academy in college under Paul Evans. Evans had a good career, moving on to Pitt after Robinson left, but it’s stating the obvious to note that Evans was not the second coming of John Wooden. So, to argue that this great era for big men was somehow a product of their exposure to master teachers would be pushing it, to put it mildly.

But, it’s more than that. In the post Wooden era, who are the master teachers in college basketball? The three that most readily come to mind are Dean Smith, Bobby Knight and Coach K who have, combined, been head coaches for over one hundred seasons and racked up over 2400 wins. And, in all of their illustrious careers, none of this holy trinity has ever produced a classic center who was an NBA star (they’ve produced plenty of other players who were, of course). And all three coaches, especially Knight and Smith, coached a substantial portion of their careers (in Smith’s case, almost all of it), before the exodus of high school players to the NBA became a trend. So, what does that say about the relationship between master teachers and the decline of basketball Big Men?

Finally, on this point, it should be noted that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an era identified by Walton as a golden age for big men, we saw a string of NBA champions for whom centers played only a secondary role. The 1987 and 1988 Lakers had Kareem, but he was near the end of his career, a poor rebounding center whose stats, especially in 1988, were barely distinguishable from that of his back-up Mychal Thompson. The 1989 and 1990 Pistons were guard dominated and their center, Bill Laimbeer, was not a post player at all, offensively. And, the 1991-93 Bulls’ first three-peat featured possibly the worst centers ever on a championship team (so did their second three-peat).

In other words, not only is there no obvious connection between great Big Men and Master Teachers, but there is also no obvious connection between great Big Men and actually winning championships in the very era that Walton defines as a golden age for great Big Men in the NBA. Yes, Olajuwon won a couple of titles - helped no doubt by Jordan’s hiatus from the league, and Robinson won later in his career after Tim Duncan arrived. But, lest you tink that Duncan himself represents a partial return of the great big man, Walton has news for you, which brings us to point number three.

3) The Shaq factor

As noted above, Walton told Greenie that one of the reasons for the decline of the Big man was that Shaq had everyone running scared, afraid to play the position. Walton singled out three big men in this regard - Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Rasheed Wallace. Walton also specifically questioned why Garnett, Duncan and Wallace why they didn’t just play more like Bill Russell.

Of course, if the point is that they didn’t because they weren’t taught to because of the reasons noted above (no exposure to master teachers), then one can only conclude that Walton’s completely lost his mind by this point. KG never went to college, Rasheed played for a master teacher for two years, and Duncan stayed for the full four. In other words, Walton is lumping together three players who would appear to have nothing in common in terms of background, college experience and style of play. But, remember the key Walton rule of life - if you didn’t play for John Wooden, you are a lesser human being. Seen in that light, a commonality emerges among Wallace, KG and Duncan - none of them ever played for John Wooden or, secondarily, even played within a decade of Wooden’s presence on the sideline. Ipso Facto…

Never mind that Duncan and Wallace have somehow managed to win four NBA championships between them in an era in which Shaq was the dominant player and supposedly cowed them all (and Duncan and Sheed both took on and beat Shaq head-to-head during their championship runs).

On the Russell comment - recall that Bill Russell was voted the single best player in NBA history. Despite that fact, Bill Walton is suggesting that the reason that Duncan, KG and Sheed don’t play exactly like him is attributable not to the fact that it’s hard to play like the best player ever but because they’re afraid of Shaq, which somehow has to do with having played in an era of declining Big Men. If you’re lost by now, join the club.
4) Bill Walton’s overall life philosophy.

Walton’s dream sequence is ostensibly about Big Men, but of course, it’s really about the overall decline of our culture. Those, like Walton, who learned from the master teachers (like Wooden), know that it’s about mental training, which is to say character, will, and heart. That’s convenient, because while the average basketball player today is indisputably superior in terms of quickness, strength, agility and overall athleticism compared to thirty years ago (not to mention conditioning), it’s harder to say whether the average contemporary player has more heart, or character or whatever because those are vague and difficult to define qualities. And, because those are difficult-to-define qualities, that’s a perfect opening for the Bill Waltons of the world to develop half-baked, cockamamie theories to “prove” that things ain’t what they used to be.

So, how did Greenie react to all this? As he usually does when he’s receiving wisdom from one of the shows’ regular “experts.” By completely shutting down all critical faculties and sitting agog, soaking in the wisdom of the masters from whose expertise he’s so fortunate to benefit. Walton’s take is “fascinating” head-shakingly illuminating stuff, never mind that none of it makes any sense at all - it’s just a parade of self-contradictory, incoherent and, of course, unsubstantiated assertions.

Just another day in the world of high-profile sports punditry.

‘Scuse me, while I kiss the sky…

Moving Day

OK, I know that "moving day" is Saturday at the Master's, but for me, it's today. David Wilson, aka Dwil, of Sports on My Mind, has asked me to join him and three other writers in a new sports blogging venture, The Starting Five (TSF). I'll paste in what Dwil wrote on his site in a moment about what TSF is all about, but I wanted to let you all know that I still plan to post every day (roughly), it's just that my writing will, hence forth, be accessible at the new site. One advantage of the move will be (hopefully) that all of us will augment our readerships by joining forces. But, I really want feedback from those of you who have been regulars here as to what you think of the new site, whether you think something is being lost in the move and any other comments you might have.

I will leave this site up in order for people to maintain access to my archives, but I will post over at TSF for the first time tonight or tomorrowdwi. The four guys I will be blogging with are all, in my opinion, really talented guys who bring a valuable perspective to sports discourse. I am sure we will not always agree with one another on every issue, but I do hope we'll complement each other well (as opposed to complimenting one another, which is less important).

Anyway, here's more information, from Dwil:

"To all visitors, check this out. My writing is moving to a new spot. I’ll be writing with four other heads. Our site is called The Starting Five (TSF). We consist of the writers of: Michael Tillery; Sports Media Review; The HNIV Report; Not That It Matters, and; me. We are all keeping our present blogs and websites up so that peeps can access our archives at our original spots. But all our new work will be posted on TSF.

So, what is TSF about? This:

The Starting Five (TSF) intends to cause a ruckus in the most honorable way. Our collective goal is to provide sports fans with an alternative to the popular Internet sports readings of the day.

We are scrupulous in our reporting of sports-related topics and subject matter; we source actual people; we reference actual publications. We relate the truth as it finds us, not as we want it to be.

Some days TSF will raise eyebrows. Some days TSF will anger many people, but inform more. But most importantly, we of TSF will be relentless in our pursuit of knowledge about the games about which we write and equally relentless in our pursuit of the truth about the people in and around the games, sports, and leagues we love.

Welcome to The Starting Five.

That’s us. Please everyone come over and check us out. Instead of five places to find info, you’ll have it in one spot. I hope everyone enjoys TSF."

I hope you like the new site. By the way, my posts will be appearing under "jweiler."