Sean Taylor - RIP UPDATED

Yeah, that must be it.
Of course, I am most recently pummelled by the "I know you are, but what am I defense?"

 

Yep.

 

I have never excused anyone's actions because of skin color.

That is your cottage industry.

 

Nope. And please don't edit my posts when you intend to quote me on something. Note that in my original statement I said that football is a game of choreographed violence. At the moment of the snap, the success of the play relies entirely on the success of a series of intentional, high-velocity collisions. Not the same in hockey. The violence in hockey is unchoreographed, and not instrumental to one's success on every play. Ask Gretzky. Different game. So keep the veiled racism veiled, please.

And the culture of hockey grows up plenty of insufferable thugs.

Neither Fenian nor I were arguing the cult of violence in football as a root cause of this incident, but were rather trying to offer some context to the quick-draw columnists and professional hobbyhorsers who see this tragedy as nothing more than an occasion to round up the usual suspects.

 

I was about to say: hockey violence and football violence are two entirely different creatures.

Jg just said it better.

 

900K doesn't buy much in Miami. In fact, this seems like a pretty modest house from the few pictures I've seen. Another thing worth noting is this: if you've ever been to the home of a rich, young, single professional athlete, it's amazing how little stuff they actually have. There's a 60" plasma, a Playstation and 47 boxes of Count Chocula. If they have children, make that 49 boxes, add 27 Disney DVDs and a 2,200-piece FisherPrice playset.

 

Exactly, I always thought the primary purpose of a burglary was to steal things and then sneak out without being noticed. But in this case, we've got two late night invasions of the exact same supposedly security-protected home within days of each other (and, really, what are the odds of that randomly) where one allegedly involved planting a knife on a bed and the other bursting through a door and shooting a guy in the groin, and as far as I know, NEITHER involved stealing things. Excuse me, Miami police, but NOTHING about that says random burglary to me.

And let's not even begin to consider other surrounding circumstances like, Oh I don't know, his car allegedly taking a barrage of bullets last year, his best friend saying he lived in fear of people in Miami out to get him, the fact that he slept with a machete by his bed for protection, and his own prior history of gun related arrests and incidents, because that would be, I'm told, judgmental and wrong.

Nobody knows what actually happened. But I am curious as to why the Miami police seem so intent to label this a burglary when all the circumstantial evidence made available to the public plainly suggests that it was something else.

 

Ok, the plasma will do.

And about 10 boxes of Count Chocula. What no, Captain Crunch?

 

That thing's going to be tough to get out the door by yourself. Especially if it's wall-mounted. Better grab the Disney DVDs and that Little Mermaid cereal bowl. Now run!

 

I'm not saying they don't exist but I have yet to meet one ... unless you count Bertuzzi.

That said, what is the definition of 'thug,' because I don't even hear of too many hockey players getting caught up in the underworld of gun-toting, AK-47-spraying and drive-bys.

There was Spinner Spencer but that was an awful long time ago.

 

Just to soothe my own mind, let me see if I can answer some of these:

- as was stated above, the intruder(s) may have cased the house the week before and come back. The position and disposition of the kitchen knife in the first break-in was dealt with in the police report, and it may have been used for nothing more sinister than to fiddle with an air conditioner vent. Besides, of all the things you could leave behind to threaten someone, who picks a kitchen knife?

- if Mr. Taylor surprised the intruder - by getting up to investigate a noise he heard, which is how this sounds to have happened - that he'd be shot in the groin makes a lot of sense. If this were a contract murder, would they not have shot him again? Shot his companion? The child? Shot in the leg and left alive bleeding sounds more like burglar panic than assassination.

- the machete by the bed really bugs me. Here's why: If a man were living in fear of his life, and if he were the kind of thug Mr. Taylor is being described as, wouldn't he have something a little more menacing to rely on than a machete? Like a gun? And don't tell me he couldn't find one in Miami. Or send a friend to the Wal-Mart to buy him a shotgun. Again, presuming he's as bad a man as many are saying, why wouldn't he have his own gun?
To me, a machete is what you pull out of the shed and put next to the nightstand after your home's been broken into - and you're newly afraid and unprepared. Machetes are ubiquitous in Miami - folks use 'em to trim back their Bird of Paradise plants and dead palm leaves. Could have just as easily been a nine-iron.

- maybe the police know stuff we don't.