CMYK 10A
Opinion
The Daily Dispatch
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When good athletes behave badly
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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Editorial Board: James Edwards, Publisher • jedwards@hendersondispatch.com Luke Horton, Editor • lhorton@hendersondispatch.com Don Dulin, News Editor • ddulin@hendersondispatch.com 304 S. Chestnut St./P.O. Box 908 Henderson, N.C. 27536 PHONE: 436-2700/FAX: 430-0125
Daily Meditation Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:22
Our Opinion
King’s life an inspiration The third Monday in January is a significant day in our nation’s history. The country will celebrate the birthday of a man who helped lead the modern civil rights movement. Through the 1950s, ‘60s and even today, Martin Luther King Jr. advanced the civil rights of members of his race. A brief bio of King from nobelprize.org: In 1954, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the NAACP. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In the 11-year period between 1957 and 1968, King appeared wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Ala., that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience, and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a manifesto of the Negro revolution. He also directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “I Have a Dream.” He was arrested numerous times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. At the age of 35, Martin Luther King Jr. was the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s an impressive resume. The man had more than just dreams, he took action. Sadly, King’s life was cut short. On April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tenn., he was assassinated. No one will ever know what all King could have accomplished if his life hadn’t ended so early, but we can all see the fruits of his labor. Some will argue that our country has yet to achieve racial equality, and those arguments have merit. But without King, our nation might not have elected its first African-American president. Politics aside, it’s a monumental event in the history of our nation. It’s a testament to the work of King and others like him. Several events honoring King are scheduled throughout the area, starting with a celebration at 11 a.m. today in the Civic Center on Vance-Granville Community College’s main campus. Other events will take place later in the week and on Monday. Regardless of our race, religion, or political affiliations, King’s work has positively affected all of us. And that deserves a celebration.
Quotable “I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.” Mark McGwire in a interview with The Associated Press after admitting that steroids and human growth hormone helped make him baseball’s home run king in 1998. “I continue to contend I have acted ethically, and it is particularly painful at this time of great personal trauma that I have to defend myself from an unfounded and mischievous allegation.” Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson in remarks after saying he would step aside for a few weeks to answer questions about his wife’s romantic and financial dealings with a teenager.
Over the years I have often had the pleasure of introducing my son to significant people as politically diverse as Barack Obama and Pat Buchanan. (Welcome to my world, kid.) He turned the tables on me one day in his early teens when he rushed across Washington’s Reagan National Airport to introduce himself to basketball star Gilbert Arenas. Years later I am still grateful to the rising Washington Wizards star for generously giving my son, whom he did not know, a few moments of encouragement amid the crush of airport hell. Yet memories of that pleasant moment, plus other reports I have heard of his charity work and mentoring of underprivileged kids, make it hard for me to understand Arenas’ recent slide from role model to butt of late-night jokes. The slide came when Arenas was indefinitely suspended and put under a criminal investigation for allegedly bringing as many as four handguns into his team’s locker room. The pre-Christmas incident was part of what Arenas called a prank that grew out of a dispute over a gambling debt with teammate Javaris Crittenton, who according to various reports, responded by pulling out a gun
of his own. Sounds like the O.K. Corral? No, it’s the National Basketball Association, where there has been a gun-related player suspension almost every year in the past decade. Arenas Clarence made matPage ters worse for himself Tribune Media at a game Services last week (Tuesday, Jan. 5) by mocking his own pending criminal investigation in front of the crowd and news cameras by flamboyantly firing his fingers like guns at his teammates. Cute. That little high-profile antic appears to have been the last straw for NBA Commissioner David Stern, who already was under pressure from the Rev. Al Sharpton to show Arenas no mercy. Yes, I know. A scolding from Sharpton for flamboyant recklessness is about as credible as a lecture on loyalty from Tiger Woods. Since his rise to fame in the 1980s as a promoter
of Tawana Brawley’s racially charged rape case that turned out to be a hoax, Sharpton has been known for rattling more social and political bridges than he’s built. But, as President Barack Obama dominates America’s left, Sharpton has shifted to the right. He recently appeared, for example, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and other venues with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, still a conservative icon, to promote commonground “common sense” school reforms. More recently, the reverend is righteously steamed at wayward black athletes like Arenas, he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, for becoming “billboards of violent and destructive behavior.” I understand. There’s no question that Arenas’ recklessness deserves to be penalized. But, I also have to ask, penalized for what? The NBA and various media commentators, including Sharpton, seem to be falling over themselves to punish Arenas not only for his mistakes but also as a scapegoat for other problems for which remedial action is long overdue. Arenas’ reputation resembles Michael Jordan’s more than Michael Vick’s. He’s a prankster, not a gangster. Yet he appears
to be catching more punishment from Stern than others have received for worse offenses. In September, for example, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Delonte West was arrested for three loaded weapons that were found in his vehicle during a traffic stop for reckless driving in Maryland. Yet, Stern did not suspend West. Where was Sharpton? He expresses “a keen sense of guilt that black leaders have not raised our voices more dramatically,” he wrote. “If the assailants in these incidents had been white, we would have been marching, but because this is same-race behavior, we shake our heads, say a few words and allow it to continue.” Other voices, like Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation, question whether black athletes deserve to be singled out. White athletes like Jared Allen, a Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman and noted gun enthusiast who “kills and eats things that would make a billy goat sick,” says Zirin, are praised as great sportsmen. True, but Allen also hasn’t been caught bringing his weapons into a locker room. Maybe we ask too much of athletes when we expect them to be models of good behavior, but at least they should try to avoid bad behavior.
Letter to the Editor Judging justices
Playing race-card ‘gotcha’ There is so much to enjoy about the Democrats’ Harry Reid problem, and yet I find the whole spectacle horribly depressing. First, let’s recap the bright side. The addlepated and vindictive Senate majority leader is under fire for saying — according to the new book “Game Change” — that Barack Obama would make a promising Democratic presidential contender because he’s “light-skinned” and can speak “Negro dialect” only when he wants to. He deserves the grief. Just last month, Reid insinuated that fellow senators standing in the way of “Obamacare” were carrying on the tradition of the racists who stood in the way of civil rights in the 1960s. That he’s been caught talking like one of those racists is a delicious irony. But irony is one thing. Scalphunting is another. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said over the weekend that Reid should step down from his leadership position because of his comments. For this we needed the first African-American head of the Republican Party? Steele is obviously right that there’s a double standard when it comes to such racial gaffes. A Republican says something stupidly offensive or offensively stupid about race and he must be destroyed, even if he apologizes like Henry in the snows of Canossa. But when a Democrat blunders the same way, the liberal establishment goes into overdrive explaining why it’s no big deal. But by demanding Reid’s resignation, Steele is making an idiotic, nasty and entirely cynical game bipartisan. Yes, there’s a double standard, but the point is that the standard used against conservatives is unfair, not that that unfair standard should be
used against Democrats as well. Whatever Steele’s other strengths and weaknesses may be, a major benefit of having a black leader for the GOP was, for me, that Republicans could have a more credible voice in attacking the unfairness of such race-driven scalp hunts. Jonah What will Goldberg Steele’s position be when Tribune Media some tired Services Republican hack politician accidentally says something Reid-like down the road? Shall the GOP, for consistency’s sake, demand he or she step down? The real, sad lesson of this episode is that we have somehow come to define racism as disagreeing with the Democratic Party or its African-American base. Reid’s defenders told Politico they’re planning to disseminate the NAACP voting score of Republicans who criticize Reid, as if voting against the NAACP is a test of your racial conscience. The Congressional Black Caucus says Reid’s comments are forgivable because he’s advancing the Democratic agenda. Translation: If you aren’t advancing the Democratic agenda and you slip up, prepare to be branded a racist and pelted off the public stage. Heck, you don’t really even have to slip up. We’ve spent much of the last year being told that “tea party” protesters are unforgivably racist for complaining about high taxes and deficits. But ruminating on Obama’s light skin and versatility with the “Negro dialect” is merely forgivably inappropriate.
Democrats have so completely mastered this practice and internalized their own heroic narrative, they are completely at home with their cognitive dissonance. For instance, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is reportedly one of Reid’s biggest defenders. Schumer won his Senate seat in 1998 in large part by insinuating that his opponent, Alfonse D’Amato, was an anti-Semite because D’Amato had allegedly dubbed Schumer a “putzhead” in a private meeting with Jewish supporters. The bittersweet irony is that racism is such a nonissue in U.S. politics today. Most of the “black agenda” is simply a throwback to the ethnic spoils game played by Italians, Germans, Jews and the Irish in previous generations. But we’ve absurdly elevated racial pork barrel into a test of one’s soul. It’s no more racist to oppose spending on the “digital divide” than it is anti-Irish to oppose pay increases for Boston firemen. No politicians in either party are calling for Jim Crow-style segregation or anything remotely like that. Instead, we have one party that, for the most part, says it wants special benefits for blacks and certain other minorities in order to compensate for past discrimination, and another party that, for the most part, wants to live up to the colorblind ideal found in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s poetry about judging people by the content of their character. Both points of view are well intentioned. But only the Democratic position gets lacquered with a thick coating of self-serving sanctimony and the benefit of the doubt from the media. Alas, rather than discrediting this charade, the Reid affair is only reinforcing it. And that’s far worse than anything he said.
If you haven’t noticed, there is something amiss in the legal community. I have my opinion, what’s yours? It does seem recently that there have been several wealthy, highly educated men, and some women, well-thought of in their communities, family-oriented, some even God-fearing, who have for some reason run afoul of the law. Let me show you where I’m going. Frank Balance, John Carrington, Jim Black, Mike Nifong, Bill Clinton, Meg Scott Phipps to name a few. Ironically, sex still raises its ugly head, but this times it appears the elixir is even uglier. This time its just plain politics. Or, so it seems. We could look at country-wide, or nationwide, but for the sake of keystrokes, and postage, let’s stay closer to home. What would make N.C. judges who leave the bench, turn around and create such organizations as “Actual Innocence Commission,” “N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law,” or “Fairjudges.net,” which is an organization that raises money to sway voter support? Or, just for the sake of argument, “What would make a N.C. Democratic judge, who leaves office five years before his term is up, support a Republican judge who is the creator of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law?” The answer might be here. Legal advocates say: If it’s in the Constitution, it’s the law. But this is not the Constitution. The following is excerpted from a probably outdated N.CGS 7A-376, page 311, Article 30 titled Judicial Standards Commission: Assuming that a judge’s resignation has been or will be accepted by the governor, it does not deprive the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over a proceeding for the removal of a judge for misconduct and conduct prejudicial to administration of justice ... nor is the case rendered moot by resignation. Daniel A. Young Henderson