Hard Away!

Hey:
check this out.
Its relevance speaks for itself, and interestingly enough, was considered fodder for the front page of the Oregonian, but got no play at all in The Dalles Sentinel, its home paper.

But of course, what really matters is Anna Nicole Smith. This has always been the case. In the middle of journalists actually apologizing to America for making them have to listen to this shit, there was also a heart-warming memorial/pop up ad from PETA, noting how much they'll miss her, as her dedication to Not Wearing Fur and Not Eating Meat was unquestionable.
Both strike me as trends among models at various points, so I don't get it, but whatever. The interest here for me is that she takes a place in the short list of people who died under suspicous circumstances (Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin,Kurt Cobain, Elliot Smith-okay, I guess it's not a short list), but no one will investigate all that deeply, since no one expected them to live long and/or prosper. Done in by TrimSpa's squad of hit-models. What an indignity.

In sports news, there's the whole Tim Hardaway thing (I really should call it the Hardaway/Whatever the Gay Dude's Name Is thing, but as you can see, I can't remember the other guy's name. I believe it's 'Aeschylus'). One would think, after the unending coverage of this tempest in the stupid-est of teapots, that nothing else in the world of sport was worth discussing...And by that I mean...Well, never mind.
But what strikes me here is the language used. Concerned Women of America are here with me on this one:
"Concerned Women for America (CWA) is disappointed that a man who is respected by many sports fans would make such inflammatory remarks. “Hardaway’s comments are both unfortunate and inappropriate,” said Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues. “They provide political fodder for those who wish to paint all opposition to the homosexual lifestyle as being rooted in ‘hate’ … His words do not represent the feelings of the vast majority of people opposed to the homosexual agenda. It’s perfectly natural for people to be repelled by disordered sexual behaviors that are both unnatural, and immoral … However, the appropriate reaction is to respond with words and acts of love, not words of hate. Jesus Christ offers forgiveness and freedom for all sinners, and that is the heart of the Gospel message. Thousands of former homosexuals have been freed from the homosexual lifestyle through acts of love. Hardaway’s comments only serve to foment misperceptions of widespread homosexual ‘victimhood’ which the homosexual lobby has craftily manufactured.”

Uh, okay, well that wasn't exactly my point...At all, but let's talk about the language Mr. Hardaway employed. Always check the language.
Remember when Tiger Woods finally got his green blazer, symbolizing his entry into The Masters, or some shit, and who comes stumbling drunk outta the woodwork but Fuzzy Zoeller (the name of a Cuddly Nazi if I ever heard one). He says some rather unfunny shit about how "they're gonna have to serve fried chicken in the clubhouse now," or words to that effect.
It was utterly without class, and worthy of a washed up has-been...Like Fuzzy Zoeller. But what he didn't say was: "I don't like the blacks. I think they should be deported."

So over here we have Tim Hardaway, saying that he basically feels that da queers should be eliminated, basically. He has a lot of America on his side for this one. The religious climate of our nation definitely makes it basically just fine for him to have this sort of hate going on, and most of the debate has centered on whether or not he has the right to express his heart-felt, well thought out opinions.
Sure he does I mean heck, jus' callin' it like I see it, right? But where he fucks up is not stopping at I don't like them. Those who say that he shouldn't say that sort of thing don't really understand free speech, and are basically just muddying the water. No; that is just his opinion, worthy of a washed up has-been.
However, "You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States." is probably legally actionable. He's fomenting violence, potentially, and there's already case law that supports my opinion on this.

Folks always hate it when one compares sexual orientation to race, so let's do it: If I said, I hates me some niggers who usedta git paid too much to bounce a damn ball, and don't care what they think about nothin', I would only have the tacit, quiet support of some Americans, and I would be roundly (and rightly) denounced by Black America in general. But at that point, I've only made myself look like an ass; marginalized those who share that opinion.
Now, were I to go forward and say, And I think we oughta kill 'em, that's where the death threats arriving in my mailbox would be in the right place.

And for the inevitable folks who will be stepping up at this point to say that Hardaway is a crusader for free speech, and standin' up for what's right, against the doublespeak of Political Correctness, I gotta say it again: at what point did you ever try? I recognize that the attempt to eliminate all hurtful language from public discourse largely speaking looked ridiculous, didn't work and mostly complicated modern sentence structure, but the attempt itself was well-meaning, and again-did it really hurt your feelings so much to not be able to call people names?
I would even accept it, up to a certain point, if he had gone the way a lot of bigots do: gay men, in a group, can be some of the most annoying people on earth. Living over the coffee shop that I do, I'd be forced to agree, but again, we're still talking about individuals here, and pretty much any group of people is going to suck. Again though, I've had to deal with these individuals and groups as people, and I don't think Tim Hardaway has. It's just a little too easy for him to talk out his ass on this one.

So again, 'he shouldn't have said that', isn't the proper response to this. That's just the usual official line, and satisfies no one. Hell, he does us all a favor by showing the idiocy of, say, Concerned Women for America for what it really is. The response, I think, would be to make Tim Hardaway have to listen to a bunch of hate speech directed at Tim Hardaway, and then see how quick he'd be to purge a group of people from society.