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It's called working a corner and keeping America's streets safe for children.

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by jason_whitlock, Oct 24, 2006.

  1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/sports/baseball/25bbmediacnd.html?hp&ex=1161748800&en=a1c7c7ed9610f641&ei=5059&partner=AOL

    new york times beat me to this topic, i guess. damn...
     
  2. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Damn. When you're getting beaten up by Squeaky, it's time to admit you screwed up...
     
  3. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    Re: It's called working a corner and keeping America's streets safe for children

    Here's an honest question for XXL Sexy. Not trying to be a smartaleck, but genuinely curious on the occasion of this column you posted. I ask because this column returns us yet again to the Barry Bonds issue.

    Mr. XXL has two important themes, which recur again and again in his work.

    The first is that Barry Bonds is only doing what the culture around him, baseball, calls upon him to do. He is not morally or ethically liable for his behavior - in fact he is powerless to change it - because that culture virtually insists a player cheat. All players cheat (Rogers, et al.) in the culture, therefore Mr. Bonds, helpless, is simply a prisoner and a product of the culture he inhabits.

    The second recurrent theme in the Whitlock canon is this: As per Dr. Cosby, et al., all young black American men must be held responsible for their own outcomes. They must take responsibility for the decisions they make. They must act upon the world, rather than allowing the world to act upon them. They must rise above the failings of the culture they inhabit (including hiphop's denigration of women, and glorification of violence; drugs; the disregard for education; the abdication of personal responsibility in the face of fatherhood, etc.). Young African-American men must, in other words, transcend the culture they inhabit and take control of their own moral future by making the decision to rise above the corrupt state of moral relativism that the culture insists upon.

    How can you reconcile these two arguments?

    Barry Bonds, not held to account because he's merely a pawn in a corrupt system?

    Or the mandatory moral and ethical self-determination of the individual, who must rise above his surroundings - or fails the Whitlock litmus test by not doing so?

    Which is it XXL?

    I don't think you can have it both ways.
     
  4. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    My passion for serving as a self-appointed sports media watchdog has put me at odds with many of my sports-writing brethren who believe in a code of silence or anonymous message-board posting.

    I like things out in the open. There’s no one in the sports media I truly dislike personally. I just have a strong distaste for hypocrisy, bojangling and hidden agendas, and I like writing about those issues.



    Holy crap. That is the most self-serving pile of shit I've ever read...but I should expect it from an egomaniacal blowhard.
     
  5. Oz

    Oz Well-Known Member

    Good point.

    And I liked how they had a poll run with the column -- Who do you consider a cheater? The options are Barry Bonds (36 percent), Kenny Rogers (7 percent), both (46 percent) or neither (11 percent). Saw those results coming, huh?
     
  6. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    An excellent post, and one that I suspect will be either ignored or at best brushed off with a one-line retort by Whitlock.

    Still, a good column by Jason.
     
  7. RokSki

    RokSki New Member

    Oh, WELL played JW. Well played. You got in so many excellent jabs in there, that was fun to read. From the "anonymous message board posters" down to the "oral cheating" (gosh, that wouldn't have anything to do with ESPN's new Page 2 hire, would it? Thought not!) Best thing you've written in a while, and that's not a backhanded compliment. Just a very nice synthesis of a lot of disparate elements. Really liked how you brought it back to Bonds, and the Albom / Lupica "Axis of Goodness" posse. Best thing I've read in awhile. Wiley gives props from the Pearly Gates.

    Jgmacg, good question. Good to see someone bringing up some good debating points. I'm not going to speak for JW, but what his column seems to say is Albom, too, can't have it both ways. If Bonds is cheating, so is Rogers. Not either / or. Even baseball purists like Olbermann accept and acknowledge the cheating in baseball. So why's Bonds all the sudden the (convenient, dark) Antichrist?

    Love the column JW. Love the question and the thought behind it, JG
     
  8. RokSki

    RokSki New Member

    Yeah, what a gem that Albom is, eh Colonel? And Rogers = Moses? When does his drivel stop? Someone needs to make a "Random Albom column generator" like they did for Simmons. Same stuff again and again. Overwrought, touchy - feely bunk.
     
  9. RokSki

    RokSki New Member

    Bingo. Ha ha.
     
  10. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    another self-promoting piece of shit, and it was posted by nobody less than the author.

    somehow, i am shocked.
     
  11. jgmac

    nice try. but i'm not saying bonds is helpless. i played football with a lot of steroid cheats and never felt it was necessary to go to the needle myself. my theme with bonds has been and is don't act like he's the worst offender because he's not. and the level of criticism directed toward bonds seems unfair. also, my point with black accountability is not a call for black people to walk on water and elevate their behavior above the community norms (poor inner-city communities are a part of a larger community. bonds operates in a professional baseball community that is totally corrupt. you have to fix the baseball community first. bonds is not trying to escape the major league baseball community and operate in the pga golf community, which is less corrupt when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs.) let's use sports writing as the example: my call is for black folks to quit hiding behind racism and go to work at your student newspaper, take a job in the sticks if you have to and work your way up the food chain the same way as most other sports writers.
     
  12. the "oral cheating" is a statement about bill clinton... he didn't consider oral sex the same as real sex...

    jemele's blog is muchado about absolutely nothing.
     
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