Bill Rhoden makes me puke

The final line of today's Barry Bonds fellatio:


Critics call Barry Bonds baseball’s greatest nightmare. Still defiant, still swinging at 42, I say he’s the real American dream.


http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/sports/baseball/09rhoden.html?ref=sports

 

The American dream; born into wealth, education and privilege and despite all the advantages of America still turned out to be a horrible and dour piece of shit of a human being.

As far as Bill Rhoden, if Jefferey Dahmer were black, Rhoden would call him the greatest American chef since Anut Jemima, Uncle Ben and Julia Child. If Ted Bundy were black, Rhoden would call him the greatest legal mind since Thurgood Marshall. If George W. Bush were black, Rhoden would call him the greatest world leader since Desmond Tutu.

 

I feel evil for laughing at that line.

 

You should, because it's racist drivel.

 

Rhoden views everything through a racial prism. And pointing that out isn't racist. I don't beleive Rhoden is a hack and simpleton because he's black. I view Rhoden as a simple hack who happens to be black.

 

I think what he is refering too is getting away with tax evasion.

 

I referred more so to laughing at Jeffrey Dahmer's cooking skills. I honestly haven't read too much Rhoden, so I have no opinion either way on his alleged racial partisanship.

 

Rhoden's not horrible, in print, when he's not playing the race card.

But when he is (two thirds of the time, minimum), you know exactly what you're going to get, once
you know the topic.

Waste. Of. Time. And. Energy.

 

Rhoden's Saturday colum should be renamed "Race Card Saturday"

 

This is the real problem with Rhoden: His predictability. Ben put it exactly right, you NEVER get a break in Rhoden's 'orthodoxy.' Any possible benefit of the doubt always goes one way, whether it's Marion Jones or Barry Bonds. It gets old. Like Ben says, it is always exactly what you knew it was going to be.

It's like a voter who every two years just goes in and pulls the "all ______ party" lever; at this point, it's just a reaction, a reflex.

If you want a certain POV, Rhoden will give it to you. If you want independent thought, he's not your guy, at least when there is any hint of race involved.

I miss Ralph Wiley.

Rhoden is Scoop in twenty years, without the Ebonics. Completely predictable whenever racial dynamics are involved, legitimately or not. Whenever the USA Hoops team beat Spain in the World Championships two years ago (before Argentina beat the USA), Rhoden wrote a foolishly triumphalist column about "this is how basketball is played in inner-city St. Louis," etc. Needless to say, there was no follow-up column when the USA team lost. We all know the drill: Lob grenades when your side is romping, hide out of sight when there's any return fire. Very, very weak.

Whitlock got it right in his AOL column the other day. He stated clearly that he is not what I call a "black athletic supremacist," that is, he doesn't believe in the concept that Africans or African-Americans are naturally/genetically superior athletes. That puts him in good company with many, including Wiley.

Contrast that with others' opinions. The "White Men Can't Jump" crowd. This brand of writer, when confronted with demographic shifts in the representation of a particular sport or sports, looks for devious reasons for the shift instead of taking things at their face. Thus, you get things like Rhoden saying that the NBDL and the players an NBA team keeps on its roster seem suspiciously similar to racist policies.

Of course they do. Sure. It's not that the NBA wants to improve its product for its consumers. Nope. It's obviously a devious plot. Who cares if a high school kid can't play, and he's watering-down the league's product? And that last roster spot on the teams? It's a transparent attempt to sign fair-skinned foreigners to sit the pine who will make the fair-skinned fan base feel better about the product they're buying. That's why the USA Hoops triumphalist column was so pathetic. It's all 'good old USA' when we were winning, but when we're not doing as well, there are no corollaries for Rhoden, such as NBA teams might want to sign some of those players who helped beat the USA team. No, it's racism, results of competition be damned. That's an indefensible contradiction, but one Rhoden has staked out in the past. It makes him look like the ostrich with its head in the sand. At the very least, it's intellectually dishonest.

What I'm writing might seem outrageous. Writing about race often generates that feeling in readers. But everything I've written here are just snippets of articles Rhoden has written. So if it seems outlandish, blame him.

I'm not saying Rhoden doesn't raise some good points, but he's always reacting - instead of acting - when it comes to race. It's not really surprising that if a person always goes looking for a bogeyman, they almost always find one, no matter how outlandish the bogeyman may be. Barry Bonds is the American Dream. Marion Jones has been totally vindicated. USA basketball is the best in the world. Don't believe the mountains of evidence, just believe the ideology.

Bunk. And Ralph Wiley, Whitlock and others would tell you so, William Rhoden.

 

That title is already taken:

 

Need to puke, again?

Read today's.