Bill Simmons smites Scoop about the head...

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

OK.

And I'm not going to readily accept a black man meeting me for the first time and immediately distrusting me because the color of my skin is the same as those who once owned slaves.

Is that the understanding I'm to have? Because if it is, it's counter-productive. That's what we need to change, not embrace.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

Harvey Araton counters Whitlock and carries the water for Stern:

Stain of Racism Feeds N.B.A.’s Renegade Image
By HARVEY ARATON
My wife and two sons were with me at the recent N.B.A. All-Star weekend in Las Vegas. The crowds made us feel more claustrophobic than threatened, but maybe that was because we weren’t roaming the nightspots any more than we would have in Los Angeles or New York.

Look for trouble in any densely populated city, and especially where people consume alcohol, and chances are you’ll find it, with or without America’s usual sports suspects — the N.B.A. and its alleged army of hip-hop followers — to blame it on. Rather than stay out into the wee hours, we went to a legends brunch to hear Magic Johnson and John Havlicek speak, to catch glimpses of Kareem and Dr. J.

Contrary to what you might have heard, All-Star weekend was not confined to a strip club or even the Strip.

You can argue that Las Vegas was not the ideal site for an event that traditionally attracts thrill seekers hoping to attach themselves to celebrities and their posses. But the casting of the weekend as a lawless referendum on the N.B.A. product has become exaggerated to the point of being imbecilic and has left Commissioner David Stern in a delicate position, between a Pacman and a hard place.

In an e-mail message, Stern said he was inclined to let the Vegas storm pass, move on as the regular season hits the homestretch. He also said he was “not necessarily a majority among N.B.A. management,” meaning the strategy is “subject to change.”

He may yet ask why nobody blamed Nascar for the death of a motorist who was shot in a road-rage encounter during a traffic jam after leaving the Daytona 500.

He may have to point out again that no N.B.A. player was involved in any Las Vegas transgression, compared with a number of N.F.L. players who over the years have turned Super Bowl week into episodes of “Miami Vice.”

He may crunch crime statistics relative to other sports events and large gatherings like New Year’s Eve that, he said, would prove that All-Star weekend was no behavioral aberration.

Opening an offensive may also be subject to critical interpretation, Stern acknowledged, writing: “It sounds so damn defensive to throw other numbers out there to defend what has to be acknowledged as bad behavior, although of the 400-plus arrests in Vegas, almost 200 were for prostitution — there I go again.”

Without question, there were people in Las Vegas you wouldn’t have hired as the baby sitter or wanted to run into at the wrong time and place. But check the newspaper clippings and broadcasts from the actual weekend: Nobody raised the terror alert to red, at least not until waking up Monday and hearing about an ugly incident that involved the Tennessee Titans’ Pacman Jones hours after All-Star weekend formally concluded.

Hindsight is 20-20, but a troubled football player accused of inciting a triple shooting — how, exactly, is this a reflection of Stern’s league?

A few hundred arrests over several days, roughly half for prostitution in a city that is the home office for Hookers R Us — how does this qualify as an indictment of a certain (read: African-American) element now said to have been running rampant everywhere but between Dick Bavetta and Charles Barkley during their charity race?

Isn’t it possible that a fair percentage of those arrested included some from among the tens of thousands in town for conventions unrelated to the N.B.A. or to celebrate the Chinese New Year? Or are only black people vulnerable to the seductions of Las Vegas?

“The subject is just so delicious that everyone from Imus to Letterman thinks it’s just hilarious to dump on the ‘hip-hoppers,’ ” Stern wrote. “Of course, race plays a part in the perceptions. Do you doubt that there were more African-Americans in Las Vegas last week than at any time in its history, and some people felt threatened by that simply as a matter of culture?”

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

cont:

It must be noted that Jason Whitlock, an African-American columnist for The Kansas City Star and America Online, initiated the criticism of All-Star weekend. But his perceptions represent only one of the hundreds of journalists in Las Vegas and ultimately have become less the issue for Stern than the latest round of mostly uninformed N.B.A. bashing it triggered on Talk Show America.

We know Stern’s league has issues. But, once again, pro football players and their entourages have been on a criminal rampage for years while a majority of the news media ignored the sobering reality on the way to another Super Bowl buffet.

Maybe it was the relative anonymity of the average player in a team-first league, compared with the N.B.A.’s individual marketing strategy, that has wrought a more flamboyant and inflammatory product. And maybe, as the Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, argued via e-mail: “Football pays the bills for the sports media in every N.F.L. city and some non-N.F.L. cities. It’s that simple.”

•

Americans respect selling power, benevolent or not, and no athlete wielded more in the 1990s than Sheriff Michael Jordan. But not long after the Bulls’ dynasty crumbled, the N.B.A. was being characterized as too young, too edgy, too scary — code for too black — as it was said to be in the late 1970s, pre-Magic and Bird.

Now it’s also the hip-hop capital of America, Thugs R Us. As if what was possibly the worst N.B.A. disturbance ever, the Pistons-Pacers brawl in November 2004, wasn’t at least half the responsibility of a largely white crowd at the suburban Palace of Auburn Hills.

Talk about drunk, about lawless. And in that case, we do have the video to prove it.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

Shot, it's a problem if anyone immediately distrusts someone else based on skin color. I can't condone such pre-judging no matter who does it.

I don't know what you're getting at. Some blacks pre-judge and some whites pre-judge. Nothing I've written supports that position.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

All I know is, between this and the question about whether Barack Obama is really black, America is beginning to have one of the more interesting and open discussions on race it's had in a long time. That can only be a good thing.

By the way, I'm not sure that, assuming Jason is correct on all counts about All-Star weekend, there is a current white equivalent in sports. But there used to be -- the Snake Pit days at the Indianapolis 500. At its debauched peak, May in Indianapolis was the white Freaknik, especially on 16th Street the night before the race as some of America's reddest necks lined up for general admission. Anything that happens at a NASCAR race these days pales (no pun intended) in comparison.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

I'll give him credit for posting under his real name. But even THAT is part of his gratuitous self-promotion.
Glad someone posted the Harvey Araton column: great, nuanced, well-reported column. As usual. It wasn't slapped together the way Whitlock's column reads, and Araton did some terrific reporting. But Whitlock's column -- because it panders to white folks here and on talk shows under the guise of being "real" or "gutsy" or whatever -- will get more attention that Araton's piece. Whitlock equates black "thugs" to the KKK. Please, please, please. Take a step back and use your brain not your emotions and deep-seated fears...

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

you'd have to know my family, boom. it's all relative.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

http://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/ny-spberg275110781feb27,0,6399649.column?coll=ny-sports-columnists

can't believe it, people are actually saying it might be a mistake to take the all-star game to new orleans. unbelievable.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

I live in a smallish town but it has plenty of bad neighborhoods. There are some all-white trailer parks I'd never enter, even on a bet, and not because they're white but because there are quite a few people who live there who scare me. But there are also black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the same town I refuse to visit for the same reason. Not because they're black or Hispanic, but because I know for a fact (police reports are good for that, sometimes) that there are some people in those neighborhoods who might willingly do me harm.

It comes off, however, as racist behavior, because people might not focus on my fear of similar white neighborhoods, but they definitely might focus on my fear of others.

Fear is what drives so much of these beliefs, and if we could eliminate the sources of those fears, it might improve things all around.

The problem is, eliminating those sources of evil can also be construed as racist because it appears you're attacking blacks, or Hispanics, or even whites.

Sometimes it feels like a no-win situation.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

yes, transcribing stern's and cuban's e-mails was pulitzer-worthy reporting. just great stuff....

i can't believe i'm at odds with david stern, my favorite pro sports executive.

 

Re: Columbia Journalism Review plans Whitlock attack....

you need thicker skin.