After reviewing the interview with
Ron Artest on the Today Show this morning, I
have a idea. Maybe the NBA should provide me with some
anger management counseling. Because the
more I see and hear, the madder I am getting not only about the stupidity and ignorance
surrounding this riot, but even more in the way this behavior is being
justified by some in the aftermath.
Here’s Artest, acting cool and detached wearing a T-shirt advertising his new record label, with a chance to say, “I was wrong,” to a national TV audience on the Today Show, but no-o-o-o-o-o. . . he simply says he wishes the whole thing had never happened. I wonder if he’s been taking PR pointers from Pete Rose? Then, he holds up his new rap CD three times to plug it during the interview. That’s real remorse there sports fans.
When asked about the effect on young boys, he muttered something about how they witnessed what happened when someone gets disrespected. And there’s more . . .
Then, Billy Hunter, president of the NBA players association comes on and somehow tries to justify the violence in Auburn Hills by it being somehow tied to the violence by the US against the people of Iraq. Do you get it? . . . George Bush is responsible for the basketbrawl at the Pistons/Pacers game. If only this brawl had happened before the election, I’m sure people would have seen what the war was doing to the psyche of even our most elite basketball players and Kerry would be making plans for his move to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Now comes Kermit Washington who crushed Rudy Tomjanovich’s face with a punch in a
1977 NBA game. Seems Kermit also thinks
that a major problem here is Iraq. Look at this except from a transcript of the
Deborah Norville show on MSNBC:
WASHINGTON: Let‘s go one step further. If you look at society in general, if you look what we‘re doing over in Iraq, preemptive strikes, where we hurt people and a lot of innocent people are killed, a lot of American soldiers are killed because we believe something might come about. So if we can give ourselves, as a country, the ability to strike first, you have to look at some—and look at the whole picture in basketball saying, Well, I think he was going to hit me. So...
NORVILLE: Well, that might be more of a stretch, linking what‘s going on in Fallujah to what went on...
WASHINGTON: No. No, it‘s not...
NORVILLE: ... at the Palace the other day.
WASHINGTON: It‘s not a stretch because it‘s on TV. And when you shoot an unarmed—let me see—insurgent and they‘re going to justify shooting here, all of this comes into our society. So we are a more violent society. Let‘s be realistic about it.
Is this freakin’ unbelievable, or what? I wish I could find the picture of those two young boys cringing and crying in the stands while the NBA proffered its version of Fallujah Hills. Talk about demolished infrastructure . . .
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