Warren Moon Plays the Race Card for Cam Newton

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/story/14879833/moon-angry-over-perceived-racial-bias-toward-newton
Cam Newton is a black college football player who has been in the news for several months because his father "shopped him" around various universities, and had him sign for the highest bidder, which is not supposed to happen in college athletics, but of course happens all the time.

"A lot of the criticism he's receiving is unfortunate and racially based," Moon said. "I thought we were all past this. I don't see other quarterbacks in the draft being criticized by the media or fans about their smile or called a phony. He's being held to different standards from white quarterbacks. I thought we were past all this stuff about African-American quarterbacks, but I guess we're not.

"Of course there is racism in every walk of society. We've made a lot of progress in this country. But racism is still there. I just thought in the sports arena we were beyond it. I think the way Cam is being treated shows we're not."

Moon added: "The thing that makes me laugh is the question of can he [Newton] come out of the spread offense? Can he run a pro offense? Colt McCoy came out of the spread offense and very few people raised that issue about him. So did Sam Bradford. Same thing. Very few questions asking if Bradford could run a pro offense. Some of these questions about Cam are more about his intellect. It's blatant racism, some of it.

It seems that Moon doesn't want the real issues to be addressed. So he's deflecting things. How did McCoy and Bradford perform academicaly while they were in colege? How did Newton perform? Based on that, can one wonder about his ability based on facts?

And of course there's the fact that racism exists in all cultures and among all people, which Moon, and everyone else who ever uses the R-word, refuses to accept.

Meantime, where was Moon a couple of years ago when Tim Tebow, the highest profile pick in that draft, was picked on mercilessly? But since Tebow is white, of course that wasn't racially motivated.

And the fact, to take a leap, that Rush Limbaugh has been criticizing Democratic presidents and politicians for 20 years means that when he criticizes Barack obama - also a Democrat - why, he's just being racist!

Meantime, we've got black students who drop out of high school at an extremely high rate. They then apply to be police officers in various cities, fail the entrance exams, so the Justice Department orders that the passing grade be lowered so these black candidates can get in. Is this not racism? Is this not telling the African-American community that they don't have to be any good at what they do, they just have to be black? And if the quality of the policing suffers, well, that's just too bad.

The Voice, But Not the Face

I'm sure you're all familiar with the story of Susan Boyle, the rather frumpy looking middle aged woman who went onto Britain's Got Talent and was looked at with disdain by the three judges because of her appearance (as well as her outspoken manner.) Then, she started singing, and golly gee whiz it turned out she had an absolutely beautiful voice. Cue shocked and impressed looks from the three judges.

Now she's had a couple of CDs released...and instead of looking frumpy, she looks like a packaged product - coiffed hair, makeup, seems to have lost a few pounds. I bet she used to get up in the morning, brush her hair, have breakfast, and spend the day enjoying herself. Now she probably gets up early, and spends an hour putting on makeup - for god forbid she ever appear in public again without looking glamourous...

There's another story...probably one of many...

Every few weeks, a digital radio station called BBC 7 plays a mystery radio serial featuring detective story writer/private detective Paul Temple and his wife Steve. They are a suave, wealthy, handsome couple - at least Paul Temple is, his wife Steve (a nickname, she used to be a journalist who wrote under a male psueodym) is tall, beautiful, and of course slender. She also has a voice that people who hear fall in lo)ve with (By that I mean the audience who listens to her.)

These radio serials were made between 1950 to 1965, when radio drama in England was in full bloom. And when most people act in front of the radio, publicity folk will take photos of them to share in the various magazines of the day, to satisfy the public's thirst to know what their favorite radio actors and actresses look like.

But you will search in vain for any photo of Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury (the actors who play Paul and Steve Temple) standing together, acting in a Temple mystery.

Why? Well because Marjorie Westbury was short - only 4 ft 10, dumpy, and with a plain face.

The shortness probably didn't matter...but to be dumpy and plain! No way would a man like Paul Temple get married to such a woman, regardless of how beautiful her voice was (let alone her personality and sense of humor).

Susan Boyle proved that a frumpy woman could have a great voice - and it's that great voice that has earned her more money than she ever dreamed of, not to mention the respect that she never had before.

But one wonders. There are millions of women who have plain faces, but don't have great voices. Do they deserve disdain? Or should they be gotten to know (okay, that's atrocious grammar, but it's late at night, I'm tired, and I'm not going to fix it!) to see if their personality is a lovable one.

That's always the joke in sitcoms, when a woman tries to set up her plain friend with a man - he always wants to know if she's pretty and is not interested in her if all she's got is a great personality - regardless of what he looks like.

(Kids learn this at an early age, too, thanks to mass media. Remember the movie Ice Age, with the very plain but apparently lovable sloth named Sid. He is looking for a female sloth. He scorns a female sloth who is portrayed as ugly (despite the fact that he is in her same league, looks-wise) but goes after one who is beautiful. Thankfully, however, he doesn't get her! (Although that might be lost on the little kiddies. Or it might not. The beautiful sloth leads him on, because he's going to be the sacrifice to a fire god. Otherwise, she'd pay no attention to him at all.)

Well, enough of this rant

Pat Summitt and Bruce Pearl

This is a continuation of my prior post, and the real post I'd wanted to make before I'd got sidetracked. It's not really a story of devolution media, just of people who let you down, badly. People whom you'd thought had class and integrity.

Pat Summitt is the most successful coach in women's college basketball, as the coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols. In the 1990s, a rival rose on the scene, Geno Auriemma of UConn. The two teams started playing two times a year, and their rivalry was such that people who didn't know anything about the women's game would tune in when their games were on tv - because a game between them was always on tv - to watch.

Part of the interest was because the two coaches didn't like each other very much. Pat was a soft-spoken Southern woman, but with a glare famous from coast to coast, and Geno Auriemma was a brash, outspoken guy who joked easily.

So one day, four years ago, Pat Summitt decided she didn't want to play UConn anymore, even though it was the most popular game all year round and great exposure for the game. But that year Geno Auriemma had signed Maya Moore, whom Pat Summitt had also tried to recruit, and the loss of this player hit her hard.

She also believed that Geno had cheated - and indeed in a sense he had. Or someone at UConn had, arranging a tour of ESPN studios, which are located in the same city as the Huskies.

But when she ended the series, she refused to say why. What she could have said, to defuse all pressure, and what would have been the truth, was "I think this rivalry game is overshadowing women's basketball. I think it's time we each started playing other teams and give them exposure. (Because, apparently, a lot of other coaches really resented how popular the UConn-TN game was, and that that was the only game a non-basketball fan would be sure to watch!)

Well, her cancellation of the game, and her refusal to say precisely why, ignited a media firestorm. Just what had Geno done to her? Had he used negative recruiting (in which women coaches are hinted at as being gay), had he really, really cheated, or what?

"Geno knows. Ask him," is all Summitt would say.

At which point I lost total respect for her.

Six months later the NCAA completed an investigation, after a formal complaint from Tennesee, and they did decide that the Maya/ESPN tour had been a secondary violation.

Was that really so bad that the most popular game of the year had to be cancelled?

If you read the Tennessee Lady Vols message boards, it would seem so.

But it gets better than that.

Bruce Pearl was hired as the men's basketball coach a couple of years ago. (Interestingly, after his first, excellent season, he was given a raise. After two years with the Lady Vols, he now made as much as Pat Summitt who had been with the Lady Vols 32 years and had 7 national championships.)

Pearl was a controversial figure. Some years ago, as an assistant coach, he had turned in another coach for cheating. Some thought this made him a stand-up guy, others thought that he was a "rat-fink."

At the time, my sympathy was with Pearl. If you know someone is cheating, are you going to let him get away with it? (Or if you think it, in the case of Summitt. In Summitt's case, what a true competitor would have done was to continue to play him, beat him, make him shake your hand and smile and like it - not just take your ball and go home!).

Anyway, Pat and Bruce Pearl became great friends. Unlike some universities, where men and women's basketball coaches don't get along - the men's coach invariably thinking that the women take up gym time that could be better suited with him own guy s in there) Pearl supported the Lady Vols - showing up at games and leading the cheers.

Then, last year, he cheated. He invited potential recruits to his lakeside home, even though he was not allowed to do this, and even though he knew he was not allowed to do this. Not only that, but a few months later he called up the parents of these potential recruits and asked them not to tell the NCAA that they'd had dinner with him at his lakeside home.

More than that, when the NCAA asked him about it the first time, he lied to them, and said it hadn't happened.

And so Pearl was suspended for a few games by Tennessee.

Now we get back to Pat Summitt. She was being interviewed by a reporter, and when asked about cheating, said, "If I were caught cheating, I'd expect to be fired." The reporter asked her if she were talking about Bruce Pearl. "No, I was thinking about the woman's game. I was thinking about UConn. There's a reason we don't play them."

To my knowledge, she has never condemned Pearl, either for cheating or lying - but I don't think she's come out in his defense either. Though she did attend one of his basketball games after the whole incident had come out, but before any suspensions were handed down.

Now I, and everyone on the UConn board, thinks this is very hypocritical of her. To condemn Geno Auriemma for cheating - in the same type of way, seeking unfair advantage to get recruits - and yet not speak out against Bruce Pearl for not only cheating but for also lying about it...

Yet the admiration for her sterling and upright character has never wavered on the Summitt message boards, nor has their constant dissing of Geno as a cheater.

To me, it seems black and white. Pat is a pillar of rectitude, and she condemns a coach from another team for cheating, so much so that she will never play his team again (except if they ever manage to get into the NCAA tournament and meet there.) Yet she has no words of condemnation for Bruce Pearl, apparently didn't think he should be fired.

Is it any wonder that sportsmanship and "bad sportsmanship" are now considered synonyms, when even the people whom you'd thought to be above suspicion reveal themselves to have feet of clay?

Sports Media - the public's message boards

There are two main "general" sports sites - CBSSportsline.com and ESPN. com. Each one posts news articles (as well as gossip articles posing as news) and allow people to comment.

And I often read these comments - some of the threads can get pretty long - more in sorrow than in anger.

It's interesting how people can see the exact same event and interpret it entirely differently, depending on their own prejudices and life experiences. For example a couple of years ago a football player named LaGarrette Blount had boasted that his team would win an upcoming game. Well, they lost the game and Blount didn't play very well. As BLount's team was walking off the field, a white player on the other team said something to him - not racially tinged, just laughing at him for having such a lousy game after he'd boasted his team would win.

The white player then looks away, and so never saw the punch that Blount threw at him - which knocked him unconscious. That is the definition of "cold-cocking" - hitting someone when they aren't looking. I've always thought that was a pretty cowardly thing to do.

But if you read the message board appended to the article reporting the incident, there were some who thought Blount was a thug who should never play football again, and indeed should be thrown in jail for assault, and you had others, equally serious, who said it the victim's fault because he had "asked for it." Trash talking goes on before, during and after games, with no violent reactions, but in this instance the guy had "asked for it" by trash talking and deserved what he got.

In the event, Blount was only suspended for six games and then returned to play with the team. This was because he was a good football player. If he'd been a bad player, you can bet he never would have set foot on the field again.

I'm reminded of a case many, many, many years ago. Some college baseball game. A batter, in the on-deck circle, was timing the pitcher, swinging the bat to try to match how soon the ball was getting to the plate and the current batter. For some reason, this irked the pitcher, who turned and threw a fastball at the guy in the ondeck circle - hitting him in the face, and blinding him in one eye. And thus ruining his baseball career - at least, the one he'd hoped to have.

Now, you would have thought that pitcher would have been thrown in jail for assault and attempted murder (it's one thing to accidently hit a batter whom you are trying to brush back, and who is looking at you and can see the ball coming and try to get out of the way, it's another to throw the ball at someone who isn't expecting the ball to be comng at him at all, and throw it at his head, as hard as you can, and with a fast ball pitcher that's pretty hard.)

This pitcher (Ben Christiansen) did not make it to the major leagues....but not because a major league team wouldn't sign him. He actually was given a minor league contract by the Chicago Cubs. But he injured his arm, and once he was no good, they let him go. But the fact that they'd even let him step onto a baseball field after what he'd done...

Sad.

What's The Attraction of People With Tattoos?

I attended a function the other day. There were 20 of us, and to start the meeting we each had to stand up and say a little about ourselves, including our pet peeve.

One of the people was a tattoo artist, who also had tattoos running down both of his arms. Probably had them on his neck, too, but I didn't have a chance to see if he did, as he was seated behind me.

His pet peeve was that he didn't like people staring at him. If I remember correctly, he said he didn't understand why people stared at him.

And I have to admit it never occurred to me that people with tattoos on their neck, arms, legs, calves, etc. etc. and etc. would not like to be stared at. Why else do they have this body art unless they want to display it for others to see?

What else do they expect?

They're stared at either because people can't believe what they've done to themselves, or they're stared at because people actually like the tattoos and want to get a good look.

So they should be happy that they're stared at!

But for the tattooed to feel self-conscious about the stares...doesn't seem to make sense to me. If they don't want to be stared at, perhaps they should wear long sleeve shirts or not get tattoos in visible areas in the first place.

The guy himself seemed nice enough, normal enough except for his liking for a lot of tattoos - he had become a tattoo artist because he was an artist and that was the quickest way to make an income, as opposed to trying to sell paintings or something of that nature. Which was a reason I'd never thought of and makes sense...

But you'd think one tattoo would be enough...to have every inch of your body covered in tattoos...and then be annoyed when people stare at you...there's a disconnect there.

Communication Breakdown #1: Wyoming Information Center on Highway 25

I went to the Wyoming Information/Welcome Center today, the one on Highway 25 which greets people entering from Colorado. It was closed. That in itself was not a hardship, I'm less than 10 minutes away from it in my little car.

What puzzles me, and causes me to despair, is the fact that when I got there, and found out it was closed, it was by seeing a sign on the door that said "Closed." Nothing further.

Usually these places have a sign giving their open and closing hours, so that people who try to visit them will be able to know when they are open, without having to guess.

This one didn't. The only piece of information on the door was that it was Closed.

So, I really want to know. It is Saturday, so does it close for the weekend. This makes no sense to me for a start, the weekends are when most tourists are on the road, I would have thought, and would want to stop in to a Welcome center.

However, usually these places are closed on Sundays, which I've always thought as foolish - the more so because I think they are manned by volunteers.

But that's not the point. The point is, is it closed for the weekend, or is it closed for the season - since it is still winter. If it was closed for the season, I would assume that the sign would say "Closed for the Season." And since it only says, "Closed," I would assume that it is open on the weekdays.

But I'm not really sure - and I should not have this problem! How much time and effort would it have taken to have a sign always available on the door giving its hours of operation, if any, in all 4 seasons?

Instead, the glass windows and doors are nice and clean and uncluttered, and signally un-informative.

I shall return there on Monday, and report back what I find.

Another thing I thought was funny, was the amount of 18 wheelers on the highway, just in the brief space of two miles that I had to drive to get to my exit.

There are "ports of entry" here in Wyoming, where every commercial driver is supposed to stop to have their load inspected, or at least their paperwork. The only problem is, those "Ports of Entry" are not open on the weekends. So on the weekends, these 18-wheelers can come through with utter impunity.

Now, does that make any sense?

Washington Post Suspends Rather Than Fires Plagiarist

I was reading the Rush Limbaugh website from yesterday and found this article.

Story #1: Another Pulitzer Prize Winner Caught Plagiarizing

RUSH: We have, ladies and gentlemen, another suspension of a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at the Washington Post, this time for plagiarism. "The Washington Post suspended one of its most seasoned reporters Wednesday after editors determined that 'substantial' parts of two recent news articles were taken without attribution from another newspaper.
Sari Horwitz, a longtime Post investigative reporter, was suspended for three months for plagiarizing sections of stories that first appeared in the Arizona Republic. The stories concerned the investigation of and legal proceedings for Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona man accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. ...

"Some news organizations, including The Post, have fired reporters for plagiarism. 'But nowadays, editors try to look at the full context of what happened and why it happened.'" Well, the full context means do we really value this reporterette? Obviously previous reporters caught plagiarizing weren't that valuable in the first place, they were just canned. But for some reason Sari Horwitz is considered valuable to the Washington Post, so that's the context that editors are looking at now, the full context of what happened and why it happened.

She basically stole, that's what plagiarism is, for those of you in Rio Linda. Horwitz joined the Post in 1984. There could be a reason why they are only suspending her. I mean, '84, she's been there a lot of years. That's quite a healthy payout. She's one of the newspaper's most decorated plagiarists. "She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize with her colleague Scott Higham in 2002 for a series about the deaths of foster children under the care of D.C.’s child-welfare agencies." Isn't everything she's done now suspect, though? You know, in their original report, the Washington Post didn't even mention her name. They just said they had suspended a reporter for plagiarism.

I have to agree with Limbaugh, anyone who plagiarizes - who works for a newspaper, publisher, etc., should be fired.

But Rush usually only gives half the story. Let's see if the original article from which he was reading has any more to say...

Horwitz copied two paragraphs from a Republic story that described provisions of a federal civil rights law when she wrote an article that was first published on The Post’s Web site March 4. A second story, first appearing online on March 10, included 10 paragraphs from a Republic story about a search of Loughner’s home. Both stories appeared in the newspaper the day after they went up online.

Plagiarism has long been one of the most serious ethical violations in journalism. Reporters often cite other news sources for information that they haven’t gathered themselves, but the standard practice is to paraphrase the material and attribute the information to its source.

Some news organizations, including The Post, have fired reporters for copying another journalist’s work and presenting it as their own. “For a long time, it was viewed as an excommunication sin, beyond mortal sin,” said Bob Steele, a professor of journalism ethics at DePauw University. “But nowadays, editors try to look at the full context of what happened and why it happened” before rushing to punish. He added that digital technology and increased competition via the Internet make such errors of judgment more likely.

So now plagiarizing isn't stealing, it's an "error of judgment" - or rather pure laziness.

In a statement Wednesday, Horwitz said: “I am deeply sorry. To our readers, my friends and colleagues, my editors, and to the paper I love, I want to apologize.” She added: “Under the pressure of tight deadlines, I did something I have never done in my entire career. I used another newspaper’s work as if it were my own. It was wrong. It was inexcusable. And it is one of the cardinal sins in journalism. I apologize to the Arizona Republic and its reporters and editors. I accept the punishment that The Washington Post has given to me. And I am grateful the paper will allow me to return. I hope to come back a better journalist and a better person.”

Horwitz electronically cut and pasted material from the Republic and then placed it in a lengthy Microsoft Word document with other notes she had taken about the shooting, according to people familiar with the matter. Under deadline pressure, she transferred some of this material to her stories, delivering it to her editors as if she had written it.

That's not an error, that's downright stealing, and it seems so silly. As a writer myself, I know it doesn't take very long to rewrite something - or if you are going to use a whole block quote, you credit your source - easy.

Horwitz, who joined The Post in 1984, is one of the newspaper’s most decorated reporters. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize with her colleague Scott Higham in 2002 for a series about the deaths of foster children under the care of D.C.’s child-welfare agencies.

She was also part of two teams of Post reporters who won Pulitzers — one for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, and another for a 1998 series about shootings by members of the District police force.

Horwitz and Higham also covered the investigation of the murder of D.C. intern Chandra Levy. Their 2008 series in The Post identified Ingmar Guandique as the most likely suspect in the case. Guandique was convicted of the killing last year.

“I have great respect for The Post,” said Lovely, the Republic’s editor. “At the same time, our reporters worked hard to gather this information, and it’s not right to simply take it. She took a shortcut she should not have taken.”

He added, “I’m not mad, just disappointed.”

Contacted at home on Wednesday, Horwitz declined to make any public statements beyond her written one.

One does wonder how she thought she could get away with it. She didn't think people would read both papers?

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the newspaper industry responds. Will they demand that she be fired, or will they shrug and thing, well, 3 months suspension, that's fair. That'll set a good precedent for future plagiarists. We mustn't have them be scared that they'll lose their jobs if they take a shortcut!

Twitter and TMZ and Gilbert Gottfried

Gilbert Gottfried is the latest person to get in trouble over his posts on Twitter. Unlike Cappy Pondexter, who said that God sent this earthquake and tsunami to Japan to punish them for being so mean to their own people (so God punishes Japan by killing 10,000 innocent people to punish Japanese rulers for being so mean to its people...there's some kind of religious disconnect there)...

Gottfried just made jokes about them. Jokes about a situation in which probably the whole damn country is terrified they're going to get radiation poisoning, in which 300,000 people are homeless, in which misery and despair are commonplace... and he's making jokes about it?

This isn't some country like Greece where the welfare state is trying to keep from going bankrupt, and students are rioting. Plenty of fodder for jokes there...but to make fun of a situation in which 10,000 people are dead, more doomed to die of cancer, I have no doubt, and 300,000 people homeless, through no fault of their own...and he finds something in this situation to be amusing?

I only saw 2 of the 10 or so tweets he apparently made (they've been removed from his Twitter Account but the garbage..er gossip site TMZ shared a few of them) and he's not making fun of the deaths, but rather of the flooding... I paraphrase: "Lost your girlfriend. Wait a few minutes, another one will float by."

You have to wonder...even if he thought this stuff was funny, did he really think that all the Americans of Japanese descent in this country (I refuse to use hyphenated words!) would not read his crap and be offended? Did he really think that the average American, who sees that devastation and reads the news of the deaths and despair every day, will not think what he has to say is funny? (Oh, there are a couple of losers who have posted at TMZ, "Oh, they're too sensitive. It's funny. But they are losers, and for every 1 loser who posts that, 999 are shocked and offended.)

Gottfried has paid the price for his insensitivity - AFLAC has fired him (he was the voice of their duck in the commercials). Apparently 75% of Aflac's business actually comes out of Japan.

We now wait to see who the next celebrity jerk is who will make jokes about the tragedy in Japan. I have no doubt that someone will.

God Doesn't Make Mistakes?

Cappie Pondexter sorry for tweets

New York Liberty guard Cappie Pondexter has apologized after causing an Internet uproar with comments on her Twitter account that were deemed insensitive toward victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

On Saturday, Pondexter tweeted: "What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes."

She later tweeted: "u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can't expect anything less."

Pondexter also used the racially derogatory term "jap," when referring to someone who was offended by her comments.

Cappie Pondexter drove right into controversy over the weekend via Twitter.
On Monday morning, Pondexter issued an apology on her verified Twitter account "cappa23."

"I wanna apologize to anyone I may hurt or offended during this tragic time," the tweet said. "I didn't realize that my words could be interpreted in the manner which they were. People that knw me would tell u 1st hand I'm a very spiritual person and believe that everything, even disasters happen 4 a reason and that God will shouldn't be questioned but this is a very sensitive subject at a very tragic time and I shouldn't even have given a reason for the choice of words I used.

"The least thing I wanted was to hurt or offend anyone so again I truly apologize. If you've lost respect for me that's totally fine but please don't let me or my words lose the respect of u the WNBA and what it stands for.

"I'm very strong woman evn strong enough 2 admit an apologize when I'm wrong. Twitter is a voice and wth tht I wanna apologize again."

I fimd myself wondering if Cappie believes that God sent the hurricane to destroy Katrina because the US lets gays into the military, as I believe Pat Buchanan suggested at that time.

Then of course Buchanan felt that Haiti deserved what it got - the earthquake - because they'd made a pact with the devil in order to throw off their slave shackles, and have been poor ever since. (It didn't seem to occur to Buchanan that they've been poor because even though they won their freedom, they were presssured by governments, including the US, to have to pay indemnity to people in other countries who had had them as slaves! In other words they had to buy their freedom from their slavemasters, at such onerous rates that they hadn't paid off the debt until after World War II!

Anyway, the fact that anyone these days believes that their "just and loving god" would kills tens of thousands of people to "send a message" is just obscene.

here's the rest of the article.

The Anti-Defamation League in New York issued a statement on Pondexter's remarks.

"Cappie Pondexter's words show the endurance of long-held bigoted and prejudiced attitudes toward the Japanese, even from young Americans in today's society whose only knowledge of the Second World War comes from history books and popular culture," Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman said.

"While it is encouraging that Pondexter felt enough remorse to apologize for her insensitive and prejudicial words, the apology did not go far enough. The notion that God would punish an entire country because of some assumed moral or spiritual defect is, in fact, another form of intolerance. Pondexter needs to understand why her words were so painful, and why it is prejudiced to suggest that one people may be inferior to another in the eyes of God."

For myself, I don't see why the word Jap is racist. "Nip" - yes, that's offensive. But Jap? Saying 1 syllable instead of 3? Just saves time, particularly on Twitter.

But as for the rest of it, to calmly say "God doesn't make mistakes" and to apparently believe that earthquakes, tsunamis et al that kill tens of thousands of people are "acts of God" - events sent by God to punish the human race - for some transgression that is never clear (why kill 1,000 people and destroy New Orleans if you hate gays? Why not send a bolt of lightning to destroy a gay nightclub, and have only that night club burn. That would be clear proof of what you're trying to say, eh, God?) that's kind of sick.

If Too Many People Fail, Standards Must Be Lowered

This is a sad story...not enough black applicants pass the test so standards are lowered...so every cop on the force knows that these men, or women, are there only because they are black and not because they are qualified to do the job - that's got to prey on the failed-but-passed-because-we-had-to-pass-you people's minds as well. And now even those blacks who passed legitimately will be looked down up on as well. (Just as legal immigrants are looked down upon because there are so many illegal immigrants.)

DAYTON -- The Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits.

It's a move required by the U.S. Department of Justice after it says not enough African-Americans passed the exam.

Dayton is in desperate need of officers to replace dozens of retirees. The hiring process was postponed for months because the D.O.J. rejected the original scores provided by the Dayton Civil Service Board, which administers the test.

Under the previous requirements, candidates had to get a 66% on part one of the exam and a 72% on part two.

The D.O.J. approved new scoring policy only requires potential police officers to get a 58% and a 63%. That's the equivalent of an ‘F’ and a ‘D’.

“It becomes a safety issue for the people of our community,” said Dayton Fraternal Order of Police President, Randy Beane. “It becomes a safety issue to have an incompetent officer next to you in a life and death situation."

“The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed,” agreed Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward.

The D.O.J. and Civil Service Board declined Dayton’s News Source’s repeat requests for interviews. The lower standards mean 258 more people passed the test. The city won't say how many were minorities.

“If you lower the score for any group of people, you're not getting the best qualified people for the job,” Foward said.

“We need to work with the youth and make them interested in becoming law enforcement officers and firefighters,” said Beane. “Break down the barriers whether they are real or perceived, so we can move forward in this community.”

The D.O.J. has forced other police departments across the country to lower testing standards, citing once again that not enough black candidates were passing.

The Dayton Firefighter recruit exam is coming up this summer. The chief said it’s likely the passing score for that test will be lowered as well.

Can "Bad Girls" Get a Clue?

Yesterday, I was surfing the web and came across a blog entry written by a woman, who was commenting on a blog entry written by a USC college frat boy, in which he was giving advice to his fraternity brothers on how to get all the sex he wanted at college. Sororities were referred to as soristitutes, and girls were ranked from 10 to 1 by their attractiveness, with all girls, regardless of what they looked like, fair game.
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-how-usc-frat-boys-are-silently-judging-you/

However, this type of activity by frat boys (or by men in general) isn't new. It's probably been going on since the 1400s, when universities of higher learning were first invented.

There was an episode of Law and Order a few years ago, in which the victim (murdered) had been the victim of just such a game by a frat boy. And since Law and Order episodes are typically taken from real-life cases, I knew that this must happen in real life.

Why do women put up with this? Because they do. Now the in-thing is "sexting" - a girl will take a nude picture of herself and send it to a boy she likes. He of course laughs, and shares it with all his friends - male and female - and the next day the girl is laughed at, humiliated, and eventually commits suicide. At least one girl has committed suicide because of this, and there's probably more.

And I'm thinking...don't these girls watch TV? Or don't they ever sit in the back of a bar and listen to a group of guys at a table nearby. Can't they hear what these guys think about women - all they think about women?

Yet they still think if a boy has sex with them, it's because he likes her and thinks she's attractive? Sorry, kid, he's having sex with you because you're a girl and you're willing to put out, and no, he won't respect you in the morning. That's why 70% of all kids born in the last couple of years have been born out of wedlock, and why 90% of those kids will grow up in utter poverty and repeat the cycle over and over.

Anyway, back to the nub of this post. At the blog post linked above, the author mentioned Tucker Max, someone whom I've never heard of, but who, after reading his bio in Wikipedia and his website, I believe to be the inspiration for the Law and Order ep and even, I think, an ep of Bones that had the same premise - a girl trying to get on a "reality show" where she wants to have sex with the TV host...whatever!

Anyway, here's a bit of the bio of Tucker Max at Wikipedia:

Tucker Max is an American lawyer, blogger and writer. He chronicles his drunken and sexual encounters in the form of short stories on his website TuckerMax.com, which has received millions of visitors since Max launched it for a bet in 2002.

Max's book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell became a New York Times #1 bestseller and has made the Best Seller List each year from 2006 to 2010. It has sold over one million copies worldwide, including 400,000 copies in 2009 alone. He is also the founder of the now defunct Rudius Media, an Internet-based publishing outlet and management firm. His book was subsequently made into a feature film of the same title.

There's a photo of the man at his wiki bio page, and he's nothing special - certainly ot storybook handsome. I'd like to think that his "sexual encounters" are all made up in his mind, because in a sane world I don't see how any woman would want to get near him. Especially now that he's a household name and everyone - at least everyone in college - must know what he does, and why he does it. Yet instead of being ostracized by women everywhere, he probably has to beat them off with a stick.

A liker of young girls vs a pedophile

American billionaire Robert Epstein, a friend of Prince Andrews and his divorced wife Fergie, has been convicted of having sex with minors. But although the news reports specify in the text that he had sex with an underage prostitute, not a little girl, the headlines continue to refer to him as a pedophile.

If you read Epstein's bio at Wikipedia, he does not go around kidnapping and assaulting, , or seducing innocent little kids. He has only used prostitutes with the makeup and dress of a woman probably twice her age. (And in the Wikipedia article , apparently all the prostitutes who serviced him had told him that they were over 18.)

So is he a pedophile because he can't tell the difference between a 14 year old made up to look like she's 18, and a 14 year old?

No - a pedophile is someone who likes very young children - innocent children, sans makeup. A hebephiliac is somoene whose sexual interest is in 11-14 year old prepubescents.

And both pedophiles and hebephiliacs are sick, sick people who should not be roaming the streets.

But a man who thinks he's having sex with an 18 year old who is only 14 years old...he may be incredibly stupid to have so many sexual partners - there's some kind of psychological problem there, obviously, but he is not a pedophile and he does not deserve to be on a sexual offender list - since again, he wasn't a predator who went out and kidnapped these girls - they came to him and were paid for their services.

And no, I'm not saying prostitution is not a crime - even if its legal (as in the Netherlands and Las Vegas - it is still a crime against the spirit, and the procurors of these young girls, who must know their correct ages, one assumes, deserve to be sent to jail for a long time... but in this instance, to heap scorn on Prince Andrew and his wife Fergie for accepting a loan from a "pedophile" is just wrong.

Laugh at the guy for having to pay for sex, but don't excoriate him for something he isnt.

Never A Slow Day For Sports Media

Over the last few years, the media whose job it has been to report the news, either tries to make it, or reports gossip as news, or reports things that aren't news at all.

This is particularly prevalent in sports media, where we get interveiwers talking to coaches not after games, but in the middle of games, the middle of innings, etc. Usually these mid-game "interviews" consist of one question, and the coach always has his/her mind on other things and rarely gives an answer that couldn't wait until after the game!

Another thing sports sites have taken to doing is reading athlete's twitter accounts, and reporting those as if they were news. They will also ask high-profile athletes what they think about the "hot topic" of the day, and even if the athlete has no idea what they are talking about, they will report it as if the athlete has taken a certain position.

Today, ESPN had this headline:

Tim Tebow backs BYU's Brandon Davies
Brandon Davies is the athlete who was suspended from the BYU basketball team because he had premarital sex with his girlfriend. Of course 99% of people today think there's nothing wrong with premarital sex anyway, ad if a premarital baby comes out of it, what's the problem? Just go on welfare. (My own view there is, if you never plan to get married, having unmarried sex, with someone whom you love, is just fine. But make damn sure you use prohylactics so you don't have babies you can't afford.)

In any event, a reporter for the Florida Sentinel apparently asked Tim Tebow his opnion, and Tebow, who said several times that he didn't know the details, is nevertheless quoted by ESPN, writing their own article on the story:

"I do always think that people definitely deserve second chances because no one is perfect and we mess up everyday," Tebow told the Orlando Sentinel. "There should be a punishment, but I don't know that he should maybe ... I don't know. I don't even know the situation, but I just always think about giving people a second chance. Maybe he deserves one, but I don't know the situation."

From this, ESPN's headline was "Tim Tebow backs BYU's Brandon Davies."

They also shared a Twitter from Amare Stoudemire:

Stoudemire was less diplomatic on his Twitter account Friday.

"Don't ever go to BYU, they kick a Young Educated (Black)Brother OUT OF SCHOOL. The kid had premarital sex. Not suspended, Not Release. Wow!"

I have no idea what he meant by "Not suspended, Not Release." Davies was suspended from the team - not the school.

ESPN's article also states:

On Saturday, Stoudemire backed off of his previous Twitter comments.

"I totally understand the actions of BYU, I totally respect the school an the conduct rules. BYU has a great athletic program," he posted.

Sounds like someone had a chat with Stoudemire, but the point is...who cares. None of this is sports news. None of this is any of our business, and its sad that these intrusive news articles are only going to continue.

Mark Cuban Rewards Degenerate

Charlie Sheen needs to go into rehab, then be sentenced to work in Haiti for a year or so, so that he can learn the value of the money that he throws away on drugs, drink, and sex.

Instead, millionaire Mark Cuban wants to reward this moron for his actions.

Report: Mark Cuban in talks with Charlie Sheen
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and actor Charlie Sheen are reportedly in business talks. Posted by Ben Golliver.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is, and always has been, a gloriously successful opportunist. Sure, he's taken flak for his pouty behavior at games and outspoken nature, but even his harshest critics would admit he's one of the NBA's leading visionaries. A natural born entreprenuer and showman, Cuban has made his fortune by being on the cutting edge of technology, keeping one eye on what's hot now and the other on what will be hot in the future.

But it doesn't take a visionary of Cuban's stature to realize that it's a good idea to associate yourself with whoever who sets a record for fastest to 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Over the past few weeks, actor Charlie Sheen has been in full-scale meltdown mode, going on a drug-fueled interview tour that's captured the nation's attention and made him the hottest name in social media. It should come as no surprise that Cuban is angling for a piece of that afterglow.

ESPNDallas.com reports that Cuban and Sheen are in early discussions for a business partnership.
Cuban confirmed Sunday evening that he's had several conversations with Sheen recently about developing programming for HDNet, the cable network Cuban owns. "You've got somebody that everybody has a whole lot of interest in who's doing some interesting things, to say the least, and we always look for interesting programming by featuring interesting people doing interesting things," Cuban said before the Mavericks' game against the Memphis Grizzlies. "I reached out and we've had some conversations, and we're going to work on doing some things."
"We're trying to decide," Cuban said. "Right now, we're taping a lot of different things that he's doing and we'll try to figure it out. It's still not 100 percent certain. "We'll do something together, but it's not certain it will be a show. It'll come down to what he wants do and what his situation is. We'll just figure it out from there, but it's a unique opportunity, I'll say that."

Here's another example of how Cuban just gets fame and the modern media landscape. His worst-case scenario is that nothing develops and he gets his name and HDNet's name out there in a big way. His best-case scenario sees HDNet landing the most insane reality show in the history of insane reality shows which would be, in basketball terms, game-changing.

Either way, he has nothing to lose and headlines to gain. Just another day in the charmed life for Cuban. Duh. Winning.

Premarital sex - a right?

A star basketball player at BYU (Brigham Young) has been suspended for the rest of the season...not for doing drugs or stealing laptops, but for having pre-marital sex.

Every athlete (and student, presumably) who goes to BYU signs an honor code - and one of the things they promise is to not have premarital sex.

This baskeball player did have premarital sex (no word on whether or not he used a condom or other birth control device) and so he was suspended.

That's BYUs right.

But if you read the sports message boards, and indeed, practically any message board that references this story, it's BYU that's getting excoriated.

How dare they make college students abstain from sex! Don't they know that that's all men and women go to college for - to drink and have sex? How dare they try to prevent young men from ruining the rest of their lives by having sex with some woman, who will then get pregnant, so that the man will then have to pay child support for the rest of his life!

As an atheist, I don't view this as a "Morals" issue, with God in the bible telling people not to have sex til after they're married. (The things Gods' "chosen" got up to in the bible...ha!)

I look at it strictly from the point of view of my pocketbook.

Common sense tells you that a 13, 14, or 15 year old girl who has a baby out of wedlock is not going to be able to take care that baby. Won't be able to teach it manners, ethics or morals, certainly won't be able to feed it without government help - my tax dollar help. And that just ain't right.

In addition there's the fact that there's too many people in the world already. I'd much rather see a couple of lions and a herd of gazelle or what have you, on a gigantic plot of land, then see that land covered over with shacks and human beings living in utter squalor.

Or for that matter, wealthy kids here in the US sitting in their parent's sumptuous McMansions, getting high on drugs. They are just as worthless, and with less excuse.

It's Worse Elsewhere....

I concentrate here on American media in all its forms, but every once in a while it's brought home to me that for all its flaws, American media is really saintly compared with what goes on in other countries!

I read a message board dedcated to European horror movies (don't ask me why, I don't like horror movies of any kind, let alone European ones, but it's just become a habit) and the people there frequently post these videos, which are available on YouTube, but which clearly come from actual, broadcast TV in the countries concerned.

Japan, for example, has game shows in which people perform the sex act while a studio audience - not to mention the rest of the country - watch. They have "naked grand prix" where women dressed in nothing but a little red ball in their mouths sit on a go-cart, with a naked hooded man racing it.

A couple of days ago they posted Spanish language videos of gameshows...somewhere...which were just as degrading to women. (I can't tell you what particular country they were from, as I didn't watch them, but the poster described what was in them...)

We say, "It can't happen here," but our own media does seem to be heading in that direction, consistently dumbing down the people so that they'll accept that kind of crap.

Then of course there's the case of Charlie Sheen. I could post three or four times a day on the antics of that drug-addicted fool. I'd like to see Two and a Half Men cancelled, but if not that, just replace the actor with one who looks similar to him. Shouldn't be too hard, and I guar-ron-damn-tee ya that the show will continue to be a success without him, as long as his replacement acts in the same hedonistic way.