Jemele on Larry Johnson

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/061204&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab5pos2

I've only read a few of columns in the past (and only one on Page 2) and haven't been much of a fan, but she nailed this column about Larry Johnson.

 

This thread will not end well.

 

Her best work so far...

 

Memo to Jemele: Just as soon as you put the phrase "throwing someone under the bus" into that same cryogenic chamber along with the term "race card", which, by the way, you decided to use when you could have just as easily said, "I routinely get e-mails from readers who are disgusted because they feel race is a subject that is used too often and sometimes inappropriately."

 

See, now I don't know if you actually think it's her best work so far, or if you're back to last week's schtick of antagonizing all the Jemele backers around here.

Clarification?

 

I thought it was a good, strong column.

By the way, if I were a coach and a player said the following to me ...

... I would say, "Hey, I got your back. If that is your problem, we are gonna give you an 8 p.m. curfew and guard the door to your room to make sure you aren't tempted to get shot, hassled by baby mamas or mistreated by mooching friends."

 

I thought it was her best work so far... I'll save the sarcasm and the antagonizing for the days when she deserves it... I'm sure that will come soon...

But that was a very good column...

 

Many of the athletes like Larry Johnson who comes from two parent homes that lives in the suburbs want that "street cred" because of other players who do not come from a one parent home and had to struggle. I do not think Larry Johnson has to worry too many guys around the corner with guns. If he does, he needs to reevaluate where he goes and who he hangs out with.

 

And no young, white athlete ever has to worry about the girl on the block, his parents or friends trying to take advantage of him.

 

No kidding. You should see some of the hussies at my country club. And I almost got killed by a flying 5-iron the other day.

 

Hill engages in the same kind of identity politics (faulty, no less) that Larry Johnson does when she calls him "more Will Smith than Tupac."

Hill also doesn't make a distinction between black men and women, but she ought to. From the very beginning of slavery, through its sordid history, through Jim Crow and even today, white America has sought to exploit the black woman and repress the black man. The exploitation is no less sinister but it does afford black women relationships and limited social acceptance never afforded to black men. When Hill talks about her relationship with her boss, it's not the same as a black man talking about it, and just about every crucial piece of African-American literature will highlight that distinction. It was also a hallmark of the Moynihan Report put out in the 60s.

Mind you, I'm not finding something to criticize here because I don't like this columnist. I'm saying that her thesis - Larry Johnson is immature because he's never really had that bad and his comments are a justification for black men to be bums - is an easy "be an adult" perspective that ignores very real feelings -feelings that, I'd bet, were heightened by Dick Vermeil, who has a sort of creepy verbal and physical exuberance.

And Vermeil made some comments - the diaper one in particular - that suggested it was more than having Priest Holmes.

 

I liked it better last week. When it was written here.

http://sports.aol.com/whitlock/nfl/_a/favre-throwing-away-great-reputation/20061130093709990001

(whoops, bad link - see #6)