The Tim Hardaway Fallout
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Did you ever wonder what would happen to a semi-relevant person who makes disparaging comments towards the Gay Community? Well here's the laundry list of consequences.....
1. Banned from the All Star Game and any future NBA events.
2. Fired from your job as Chief Basketball Operations Advisor for the CBA's Indiana Alley Cats.
3. Dropped as a spokesman for Bald Guyz. (Who knew? Bald Guyz CEO Howard Brauner said the company “does not discriminate based on lifestyle choice, color, education, financial resources, religion, physical capabilities or in any other way.”)
4. Ridiculed on blogs and on YouTube
5. Bring Rony Seikaly back from the dead.
6. Have TimHardaway.com removed.
6. Have your Carwash renamed, but still get phone calls to the place asking about the incident.
Is Tim Hardaway's House of Wings the next causality? Seriously Timmy.....gay people are pretty creative. You might want to have one do some work on your homepage.
In all seriousness I can't understand something. This is a BIG deal don't get me wrong, but why is this such a spectacle and racist remarks usually aren't? I mean Michael Irvin said some pretty f'ed up things about Tony Romo, Nick Saban used the word Coon-ass, Anita Marks called an NFL Player a Monkey, and even Smash walked out of practice after Asst Coach MacGill said black players were "Junk Yard Dogs". Most of these barely caused a blip on the radar screen of National News.
Just seems like to me we should focus on fixing ALL bigotry.....not just certain kinds.
5 Comments:
You're right, seems like a bit of hypocracy on ESPN's side, but RUTS is dead on, "hate" is a strong word, which was not used in the other cases. Either way, ESPN had other agenda's (like the fact that they published the book) in pushing this issue, and they took the bait and ran with it.
OMG, did your heart strings not get pulled a little when Riggins went after that racist corner last week? And when Mac wasn't gonna let those hillbilly cops get at Smash, I was moved.
well put. why the difference? bigotry is bigotry and in my book the racial kind is the worst.
"douchebaggery"- Nice
Two relatively simple answers to your question:
1. ESPN and All-Star weekend. Bad timing, and a really bad marketing machine to have against you when they're trying to promote the shit out of something.
2. The simplicity of the comments. What's the one part of Hardaway's rant that everyone remembers? "I hate gay people." That's it. That's the headline.
None of the other examples you gave have the combination of a high profile offender, horrendous timing, and blatant hatred. Nobody knows or cares who Anita Marks is. Everyone already know that Michael Irvin is a coked-up dolt prone to douchebaggery, but his comments weren't exactly "I hate white people."