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Post by Moses on Dec 6, 2004 17:55:17 GMT -5
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Post by Moses on Dec 6, 2004 21:37:06 GMT -5
Mon, Nov. 22, 2004 Black players in particular should heed Stern warningJASON WHITLOCKNBA commissioner David Stern sent a message to his players Sunday. By issuing three of the harshest penalties in league history — a 73-game suspension of Ron Artest, 30 games for Stephen Jackson and 25 games for Jermaine O'Neal — Stern let his players know that the league will aggressively try to clean up its image problem. For their role in Friday's ugly brawl at Detroit, the Pacers, favorites to represent the East in the NBA finals, received the death penalty. Indiana's season is over. O'Neal, Artest, both All-Stars, and Jackson are Indiana's three best players. Stern had no choice. TV ratings for the league have been steadily falling since Michael Jordan's heyday. The league's image has been in decline since Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Jordan ruled. Allen Iverson, Latrell Sprewell, Kobe Bryant, Dream Team failures, an embrace of all the negative aspects of the hip-hop culture and a horrid style of play have conspired to make the NBA easy to ignore. By decimating the Pacers and publicly acknowledging that there has been a lowering of expectations in terms of player (and fan) behavior, Stern made it clear he's not in denial about the NBA's troubles. I am, however, concerned that the league's players will remain in denial. Surrounded by groupies and yes-men, fortified by multimillion-dollar contracts and endorsement deals, it will be easy for NBA players to misinterpret Stern's warning. In this column, I am calling on my peers in the media to level with NBA players (and all professional athletes) and tell them what's really going on. American sports fans, particularly those who consistently shell out the hundreds of dollars it takes to attend a professional game, are fed up with black professional basketball players in particular and black professional athletes to a lesser degree. Yeah, let's cut through all the garbage and get to the real issue. The people paying the bills don't like the product, don't like the attitude, don't like the showboating and don't like the flamboyance. The NBA, which relies heavily on African-American players, is at the forefront of fan backlash. Stern realizes this, and that's why, spurred on by the Detroit brawl, he is reacting decisively. What the players must come to grips with is that just because race is an element in the backlash, that doesn't mean the backlash is fueled by racism. We're witnessing a clash of cultures. A predominately white fan base is rejecting a predominately black style of play and sportsmanship. Who is on the right side of this argument? The group that is always right in a capitalistic society. The customer. That's why Stern, endorsed by his owners, came down hard on the players. He stated that the NBA would take steps to ensure that its fans improved their behavior. But Stern knows the real solutions are in the hands of his players. A good businessman caters to his audience. They don't play country music at my dad's inner-city bar for a reason. Stern's players must bow to the desires of their fan base. In general, African-American athletes have always been — for lack of a better description — more expressive and flamboyant on the field of play. Go back to the Negro Leagues — showboating was part of the entertainment package. The Negro Leagues catered to a predominately black fan base. We, black people, begged for integration. We demanded the right to play in the major leagues, the NBA, the NFL, the NHL. These leagues accommodate a white audience. As long as the customer base is white, the standard for appropriate sportsmanship, style of play and appearance should be set by white people.This is fair, particularly when the athletes/employees earn millions of dollars and have the freedom to do whatever — and I mean whatever — they want when they're not playing or practicing. If African-American players are unwilling to accept this reality, NBA owners will speed up the internationalization of their team's rosters. Many African-American players with NBA-quality skill will soon find themselves circling the country playing basketball with Hot Sauce and the And 1 Tour while Yao Nowitzki collects a $10 million NBA check. The black players will have no one to blame but themselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ © 2004 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. www.kansascity.com |
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Post by Moses on Dec 6, 2004 21:46:03 GMT -5
Guest Commentator John Reynolds III, responds. Jason Whitlock, who died and made you resident HNIC? Better yet, what white benefactor’s message do you promote in his stead? My mouth is still open in amazement after reading your column, “Black Players in Particular Should Heed Stern Warning.” No doubt you thought you were being witty using “Stern warning” as a double entendre. You weren’t. Your column’s content is shocking and assaults my expectations. I expect Black columnists to be a voice of reason in a racist American wilderness. I expect Black columnists to support our Black athletes’ right to participate in their profession. I expect Black columnists not to lobby colleagues to echo a self-hating point of view. I expect Black people, columnists and otherwise, to support our right to exist without requiring us to whitewash ourselves, period. As our “hip-hop” athletes say, “my bad.” I forgot about the valued role some of our people play in our continued oppression. To use your language, “let’s cut through all the garbage and get to the real issue.” Okay. House Negroes such as yourself do not have a mind of your own. Like Clarence Thomas and similar conservative lawn jockeys, your message is rooted in a “how do we look to whites?” mentality. You are so happy to sit at the white boys’ table of oppression, you believe you have “arrived” because you are willing to express his views of you; yes, his views of the “flamboyant” athlete are his views of you. How did you connect the dots from Ron Artest’s implosion (one man’s actions) to the “white fan base's” general dislike of black players’ showboating, flamboyance and the racists time-honored label, “attitude”? If race is an “element” of white backlash, which I could care less about, how can one disconnect said backlash from racism? Since we are also on opinion’s slippery slope, what percentage of race would be needed connect or disconnect it from racism? Ten percent? Twenty percent? Ninety percent? “A clash of cultures,” you say. A white fan base rejects black play and sportsmanship. You are correct about the Negro Leagues of days past catering to a black fan base, but you fail to mention that the basis of white play and sportsmanship made the Negro Leagues necessary. The basis of white play and sportsmanship is exclusion. Exclusion of anything non-white. Special exclusion of anything Black. Also, a requirement of any token participant, when needed (Jessie Owens comes to mind), to accept white harassment from fans and players alike as an element of “sportsmanship”. American racism’s vitriol and endurance do not surprise me. American racism’s denial insults me. American racism’s House Negroes dismay me, but shouldn’t. The fuel of my dismay is the expectation that we will not delude ourselves regarding past, present and persistent American racism. White America, which you euphemistically refer to as “the customer,” has a dismal track record of addressing the interests of Black people as human beings. Perhaps you have read of The Missouri Compromise, 40 acres and a Mule (never received), Plessey v. Ferguson, and de facto segregation fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education? Are you suggesting slavery endured because cotton buyers (customers) approved of it with their patronage? Are you suggesting a cotton boycott fueled the end of slavery? <br> You have made several troubling assertions in your column with which I would disagree even if you had facts to support them. “Stern’s players must bow to the desires of their fan base”? We, Black people, “begged for integration”? “We demanded the right to play in the major leagues”? Stern’s players? I thought Stern worked for the league, as the players do. Begged? What did we promise in exchange for our begging? To speak only when spoken to, like a child? Demanded? What was our leverage? That we’ll take our flamboyance and showmanship and go home if we are not allowed to play? No. All of us (okay, most of us), including athletes, demanded to be accepted as human beings. Participation in sports leagues is an appurtenance of acceptance, not a goal. That acceptance has been a moving target since our arrival in America. It is my sincere desire that Black athletes continue to reject the myth that a “standard for appropriate sportsmanship, style of play and appearance should be set by white people.” Anytime the words “standard” and “white” are used in a sentence, paragraph or vocabulary together, Blacks are assured of receiving short shrift whether the calendar reads Seventeen Hundred and Four or Two Thousand and Four.
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Post by Moses on Dec 7, 2004 9:06:07 GMT -5
 www.thestar.com Nov. 30, 2004. 07:17 AM Probe here over aired Arab slursArafat mourners derided on MSNBCANTONIA ZERBISIAS The all-news MSNBC, which recently got the go-ahead for unrestricted access to Canada's digital dial, may have run afoul of our hate laws when its Imus In The Morning advocated dropping a bomb on Palestinians to "kill 'em all."Both the RCMP and the federal broadcast watchdog are on the case, investigating complaints from some two dozen Canadians. They include Paul Jay, best known as the independent producer behind CBC Newsworld's recently cancelled counterSpin. "I watched (Imus) and immediately I was outraged," he told me yesterday. Morning jock Don Imus, whose syndicated shock-talk radio show is simulcast on MSNBC, was probably just joking when he and his crew made racist, derogatory remarks during coverage of Yasser Arafat's funeral on Nov. 12. [no, he wasn't] But many Americans, and obviously a few Canadians, weren't laughing when they caught this exchange between Imus, his sports anchor Sid Rosenberg and their producer Bernard McGuirk over images of the crowds mourning the death of the Palestinian leader. IMUS: They're (Palestinians) eating dirt and that fat pig wife (Suha Arafat) of his is living in Paris. ROSENBERG: They're all brainwashed, though. That's what it is. And they're stupid to begin with, but they're brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now. McGUIRK: You can just imagine standing there. ROSENBERG: Oh, the stench. IMUS: Well, the problem is that we have Andrea (Mitchell, NBC foreign correspondent) there. We don't want anything to happen to her. ROSENBERG: Oh, she's got to get out. Just warn Andrea, get out, and then drop the bomb, kill everybody. McGUIRK: It's like the worst Woodstock. ROSENBERG: Look at this. Look at these animals. Animals!"We have commenced an investigation," confirmed RCMP constable Howard Adams. "We've received in the vicinity of 22-25 complaints; we're looking into them," said Philippe Tousignant, a spokesperson for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). In the U.S., the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained and, last week, received an apology from MSNBC. "The views expressed on the program are not those of MSNBC," said the channel. "Having said that, it was unfortunate that these remarks were telecast on MSNBC. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by these remarks." But, between the complaint and the apology, the Imus show aired more offensive comments. (For transcripts and video, go to http://www.mediamatters.org.) If it turns out that the Imus show broke Canadian laws — and advocating the death of an ethnic group certainly qualifies — then somebody, either from the cable and satellite companies who carry the channel, or Rogers and Shaw Cable, who jointly hold the licence for MSNBC Canada, may face a prison sentence of up to five years. But Jan Innes, vice-president of Rogers Communications, told me yesterday that she wasn't even aware of the investigation: "We didn't get a single complaint." Which is not surprising since most people wouldn't know Rogers was partly responsible for the channel, now seen in some 316,000 Canadian households via satellite and cable. And, just to complicate matters, MSNBC Canada is no more. Thanks to a recent CRTC decision, the original MSNBC signal from the U.S. will be transmitted unimpeded here, without Canadian content interruptions. "As of (tomorrow), we will no longer be officially responsible for the channel," said Innes. Just the same, all the companies that distributed the Imus program's offending remarks are, like any publisher, liable. "The issue is will Canada exercise sovereignty on this question or not," said Jay. "I think charges should be laid against the hosts, so if they ever come to Canada, they can be arrested. The CRTC should move to have this show either removed from the Canadian broadcast or the hosts should be fired. Certainly this is what would happen to a Canadian broadcaster." Well, yes. In fact, in the case of the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera, hate speech against Jews got it effectively banned in Canada even before it was launched here. After intense lobbying by community groups, the channel got the go-ahead for Canadian carriage last July, but with so many restrictions that no Canadian distributor will pick it up. This month, the CRTC also gave the green light to Fox News, which has the same limits as MSNBC and CNN. As for Imus, his in-your-face, Howard Stern pseudo style is ill-suited to a supposedly serious news channel co-owned by NBC News and Microsoft. And this isn't the first time he's run afoul of Arab-Americans. According to CAIR, he has called Arabs "goat-humping weasels" and has repeatedly referred to them as "ragheads." You'd think MSNBC and NBC could do better than this. |
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