Nice to see that Arianna Huffington is hiring folks who can keep up with Rush Limbaugh.
This from television writer and baseball broadcaster Ken Levine, in a blog post on the Huffington Post.
Here’s what the average sports fan sees when he comes across an NBA game: mean, arrogant, scary looking, tattooed, prison inmates. Not exactly All-American role models unless you’re a gang member or skinhead. In interviews these players often come off sounding like Pogo. So when Tim Hardaway says a spectacularly idiotic thing the league may feign shock and outrage but the truth is – what do they expect?
And Hardaway is supposed to learn his lesson and become tolerant of homosexuals because he can’t take part in the Foot Locker Three-Point Shootout. Stupidity in the NBA is not confined to the players.
As a Democrat, one who has seen Hillary Clinton tell a crowd of African Americans that the Republican Party ran Congress like “a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about”, this is no surprise to me. The fact is, a lot of these activist liberals, who get on their soapboxes on every issue, are just as racist as their conservative counterparts — only they lack the testicular fortitude to be as open about it as a Michael Savage or a Bill O’Reilly.
Levine wrote this ‘apology’ on his other blog.
Secondly, I completely agree that down through the years there have been basketball stars who are very worthy role models. Many of my heroes during childhood were NBA stars. Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Oscar Robinson, etc. And then the great stars in the Magic-Byrd era. Alan Iverson couldn’t carry their gym bags, class-wise.
Third, by blasting the NBA I’m not saying any of the other sports were above reproach. I was hosting Dodger Talk during the John Rocker period and wish you could’ve heard how I blasted that cretin on the air. Ignorance and bigotry are not exclusive to professional basketball.
A sad apology from a closet racist. He and Tim Hardaway must share the same mental faculties.
I could write more — for instance, I could point out the various spelling errors, or correct his assertion on the All-Star game being on cable (the NBA moved the All-Star Game to TNT in order to placate the network during tense negotiations in 2002) — but educating bigots is a fruitless activity.
