Gee. Must be a huge burden to bear to always be the smartest guy in the room.

Must be a huge burden to make ASSumptions about other people...:D

+1 Kcohen...........

As was said of Joe Louis, he was a credit to his race -- the human race.

Yeah, maybe I went too far with my post....haha.

I just get tired of all the racial BS so I thought I would rant.

Fwiw, I agree Whitlock is an incredibly huge douche!

Also, I am not ALWAYS the smartest guy in the room. Most of the time, I feel like the dumbest....haha.

A good rule of thumb is not to discuss race, religion, or politics in any kind of public forum, because it will always end in rancor. Take the high road and conduct yourself intelligently at all times, as you can never lose.

But you just did right there, Barry.

I'm a curious person and ask people about their national backgrounds and religions-- in a friendly. non-judgmental way. I don't have to subscribe to something to be interested in learning how it works. Notice, I didn't say politics.

There are good sportswriters who say intelligent things, but there sportwriters and commentators who are specifically picked to stir the pot and get 'hits' for the web site. I mean, come one, do you think Fox Sports hired Deon Sanders as a commentator for his intellectual insight? I promise you, Terrell Owens will be hired as a tv football commentator sooner rather than later.

I'm somewhat familiar with Mr. Whitlock's articles. I think he does provide some interesting and different viewpoints to current stories (in a sea of bandwagon jumpers), but his job clearly is to stir the pot and be controversial and contrarian. I'm sure in his contract it states somewhere "The undersigned agrees to be controversial and contrarian."

Let's look at it from another angle. If the lefties would back off and let the religious right teach Christianity in school with the premisis that we ALL descended from Adam and Eve, then race wouldn't be an issue either, right?

Edited to add: I'm not looking for a discussion on religion as this isn't the place for it. I was just giving another point of view to the comment that I quoted.

I thought of that too David.:o

religion thingy
 

Guys- lets don't go down the religion path please. We are not going to come to any conclusions concerning evolution, or creationism, on this board.

A couple very minor points. Who is this Jason guy? :) Did he play for the '27 Yankees or what? (j/k)

Did you know that many, if not most, African Americans take offense at them being described that way? They say they aren't from Africa. I generally use the term light green or dark green, just as we did in the Marine Corps over 30 yrs ago. We are all green in that respect.


Also, whomever mentioned the word "ignorant" and the way it is used 98% of the time is correct. When someone calls me ignorant I will answer them with a yes or no. If yes, then I don't know about the subject. If no, then I explain that I do know about the subject and they would be better served by just calling me "stupid". There is a big difference.

I'm a lefty and we would prefer to be called southpaws.

A couple small tales to encourage thought and maybe lighten the mood a touch.

I know a teacher who has a pretty diverse class and somewhat large class size. And the various groups are constantly making insensitive comments to each other. Finally fed up they had the class line up by color! It was then pointed out that it had become very difficult to tell who was in what group. The bickering was greatly diminished.

The other was a caller to a show I listen to occasionally. The caller had nearly been kicked out of college his first week for checking "African-American" on one of the forms. This was a problem, as he was white. Of course the full story was that he then explained that he had been born in South Africa and was a naturalized citizen. So the term was technically entirely correct.(Yeah, maybe he made it up. It's still funny.)

Steve B

I use the word ignorant to describe a person's complete lack of self-awareness. I do not believe I am using it incorrectly.

"D!ck jokes" are some of my favorites, but "slipping on a banana" jokes are good too.

Inexcusable. Total lack of class, judgement and reflects poorly on himself and his family. He should be dismissed immediately. If I did that and my employer found out about it they wouldn't even let me back in the building.

OK, Scott, lets go with that. So is it the message or the messenger? Since your post seems to indicate that you think it may be OK to "tell a funny ethnic slur joke thought" privately to someone like your girlfriend (which sort of validates the point of my post), I am led to conclude that it isn't so much the message as it is the messenger. That's kind of fascinating to me. Is it OK for you to say what Whitlock said privately to your girlfriend but wrong for Whitlock to say it publicly? The word "disingenuous" is coming to mind. I hope I'm wrong. Please explain, because I'm not getting it.

It would be wrong for Whitlock's joke to cross my mind, and it didn't; however, as you said, that sort of thing does cross the mind of many people. Most are smart enough to either keep it to themselves or to at worst, say it in private. Tweeting it when you are a public figure is stupid.

Kenny, thanks for only calling me 'disingenuous'. I sincerely hope I haven't offended you - it was not my intention.

The fat clown is at it again. Whitlock's story about the Knicks loss last night is headlined "Chink in the Armor" and shows a picture of Lin.
Enough is enough, he needs to be canned, it's obvious his "apology" was not meant and that he doesn't realize what a buffoon he is.

Bob, almost invariably the writer of the news story is not responsible for the headline. That being said, I think what Whitlock said is not a big deal -- as long as he said it privately to friends. Publicly? That's bad.

Here's a story that I passed on to a friend yesterday for his birthday, I was up in a very remote town in northern Maine, at a bar of course, and this man about 85 that had never been out of the state asks my if in my travels if I've ever met any "colored" people. Well, I thought of my friend that was getting his leg done in tats to finish his artwork and replied that he was the only one that I could think of that was truely "colored". I guess I just don't get the races thing, thought we were all members of the human race.

Rawn

I stopped listening to East Coast SPN long ago...since they don't acknowledge existence of anything out here west of the Missisippi (except for the Lakers)...juvenile incidents like this only adds to my disdain for that channel.

Ricky Y

I guess Tim Tebow and Denver play their home games east of the Mississippi!

To me this is just like the steroid argument. Steroids are a form of cheating but who is it hurting? My answer is the kids who are growing up watching these men slowly kill themselves with drugs. The kids do not have the maturity or impulse control or reasoning skills to realize this and they try different things that can be VERY harmful to them to try to get an edge.

Same thing with this kind of hate speech. It is nothing more than that. The statistics on the "harmless" jokes are staggering. I urge people to visit websites like "Teaching Tolerance" and the Southern Poverty Law Center if you want to see some of the stats on how harmful this kind of speech is.

I personally had an example of this just this week and have been dying to get here to post it...I have students come into my class (4th grade) and repeat the dumb and disgusting all the time. Friday, a student in my class who idolizes Kobe Bryant said to me he "can't wait for Kobe to play the Knicks and drop the bomb on Lin!" I asked him what he meant...he told me just like the A-bomb on Hiroshima. I told him that Lin was from Taiwan and not Japan and that his comment was out of line. Thousands of people died that day and it is not a joke. He just could not understand, being 10 years old, that what he said was bad. When I asked him where he heard that joke, he said his older brother heard it from his father. I emailed the father and he emailed back saying it was harmless. I then asked him if it would have been harmless had the japanese girl in my class said that "Lin was going to enslave Kobe next time they met on the court." That drove the point home. The family I spoke to was black. They immediately apologized and were horrified when I turned it around. They also assured me that they would be more mindful about what they say in front of the kids.

People need to understand they are not alone in this world and often there are young ears either watching the channels, reading the web, or just looking over your shoulders. These comments are neither harmless nor appropriate at any time.

Joshua

...........

I've been mostly ignoring this thread as it does not belong in a baseball card forum but I'm glad I read this post. Nice to see some critical thinking, lack of emotional lashing out and providing specific examples of real lives and children. Thanks.

As tough as it is to be shocked these days the screen shot tbob put up is unbelievable , is that espn website? Unreal:confused:

Really? I stand corrected then...if they are no longer talking Brett Farve man crush I may just tune in again sometime! :-)

Are you sure it was Whitlock that wrote the latest headline? The stories covering it do not say that. Even I object to that one.

I think that Whitlock is Fox Sports, this was an ESPN web page I thought.

There is no way Whitlock would have written that under the circumstances. Whoever did should be summarily dismissed, world of difference between some stupid sophomoric humor (Whitlock) and this (racial/ethnic slur).