Sean Taylor - RIP UPDATED

Here are your hockey thugs:

http://www.tsn.ca/canadian_hockey/news_story/?ID=223937&hubname=

 

I meant on the ice. Perhaps I should have used the word goon. I mentioned one before, Jesse Boulerice. Like most hockey players, he's a terrifically nice guy off the ice, and fantastically polite. That he ended another youngster's career by nearly killing him with his stick apparently escaped the NHL's notice.

 

The thought that I keep going back to is that this was a contract hit, that Sean Taylor was the intended target. No one else in the house. Maybe if wasn't supposed to be a fatality, but make sure he can't play football ever again.

I'm troubled by the lack of an alarm system in his house, by the fact the house had been hit a week prior with a knife being left near or on Taylor's bed and that nothing has been reported stolen yet.

 

Boulerice, Bertuzzi, McSorely, Simon, Claude Lemieux. What do they all have in common? Their misdeeds happened on the ice. That does not excuse what they did, yet it needs to be reinforced that they weren't attacking people on the street or in their homes.

 

And football has Marcel Vick ... who is an asshole on and off the field.

 

Sorry, I can't get the link to work, so in verbatim, and a possible repitition:

Taylor's death a grim reminder for us all
Jason Whitlock / FOXSports.com
Posted: 6 hours ago

There's a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same.
Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you're a black man living in America, you've been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.

The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.

No, we don't know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it's no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You'd assume a heart attack, and you'd know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.


Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?

About as well as the attempt to shift attention away from this uniquely African-American crisis by focusing on an "injustice" the white media allegedly perpetrated against Sean Taylor.

Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor's victimhood by reporting on his troubled past

No disrespect to Taylor, but he controlled the way he would be remembered by the way he lived. His immature, undisciplined behavior with his employer, his run-ins with law enforcement, which included allegedly threatening a man with a loaded gun, and the fact a vehicle he owned was once sprayed with bullets are all pertinent details when you've been murdered.

Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player, made the radio circuit Wednesday, singing the tune that athletes are targets. That was his explanation for the murders of Taylor and Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams and the armed robberies of NBA players Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry.

Really?

Let's cut through the bull(manure) and deal with reality. Black men are targets of black men. Period. Go check the coroner's office and talk with a police detective. These bullets aren't checking W-2s.

Rather than whine about white folks' insensitivity or reserve a special place of sorrow for rich athletes, we'd be better served mustering the kind of outrage and courage it took in the 1950s and 1960s to stop the white KKK from hanging black men from trees.

But we don't want to deal with ourselves. We take great joy in prescribing medicine to cure the hate in other people's hearts. Meanwhile, our self-hatred, on full display for the world to see, remains untreated, undiagnosed and unrepentant.

Our self-hatred has been set to music and reinforced by a pervasive culture that promotes a crab-in-barrel mentality.

You're damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men. When your leading causes of death and dysfunction are murder, ignorance and incarceration, there's no reason to give a free pass to a culture that celebrates murder, ignorance and incarceration.

Of course there are other catalysts, but until we recapture the minds of black youth, convince them that it's not OK to "super man dat ho" and end any and every dispute by "cocking on your bitch," nothing will change.

Does a Soulja Boy want an education?

HBO did a fascinating documentary on Little Rock Central High School, the Arkansas school that required the National Guard so that nine black kids could attend in the 1950s. Fifty years later, the school is one of the nation's best in terms of funding and educational opportunities. It's 60 percent black and located in a poor black community.

Watch the documentary and ask yourself why nine poor kids in the '50s risked their lives to get a good education and a thousand poor black kids today ignore the opportunity that is served to them on a platter.

Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever. There's only one group of people who can change the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted. We have to do it.

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According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.

The "keepin' it real" mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you're selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.

The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.

In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next.

 

Those are all valid well-stated points, JG. Your post did make me re-think this a bit. You might be correct, but gut instincts and common sense logic still tell me whoever pulled that trigger was likely someone that knew Taylor and went in that house with the purpose of putting a bullet in him.

 

Both Vicks! Michael and Marcus.

 

Or to make sure he can't do something else ever again. This may be inappropriate speculative fervor, but has anyone considered whether the bullet wound's location near the groin might give a clue as to motive. That's certainly not the first area you'd aim to kill someone, but if your intent was to take something else.

 

That's a possibility-either that, or it was just an errant shot. Regardless, I don't think the shooter would have aimed at the groin thinking, "I can kill him if I hit the femoral artery."

 

Jealous husband/boyfriend?

Another possibility left unexplored in the rush to judgment.

 

Absolutely, that's a possibility.