Yesterday, I posted about that New Yorker article about Kobe Bryant, which I'd listened to in podcast form. The one thing that jumped out at me as bloggable — from what was a very long article — was his comment about abstaining from the politics around Trayvon Martin, and now I see that I wasn't the only one.
The author of the article, Ben McGrath has an item today about the "contentious debate" stirred up by a question he'd asked with "no particular expectation of controversy." This new piece seems like an effort to protect Bryant from criticism, and it also reveals that Bryant himself has been working to shore up his reputation (by tweeting "Martin was wronged" and "the system did not work").
Read the whole thing, which includes this Bryant quote: "I won’t say, ‘O.K., I’m going to vote for Obama just because he’s an African-American... I’m not going to do that in a million years." And there's material about Bryant spending 7 years of his youth in Italy and getting "a strong sense that there is 'a much bigger world out there,'" and how he's been called "somewhat confused about culture because he was brought up in another country."
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"Liberalism: The Terror and the Boredom."
One tiny step toward the limits of the plantation and all hell will break loose. Kobe better watch out.
If you read the follow-up article, he's sticking to his guns, mostly. Good for him. Only he knows his life experience and only he can decide what it means to his views on life.
Frankie Knuckles The Whistle Song will always make me think of my entre to the east coast. The Pines, Cherry Hill, Fire Island, Ptown, Ogunquit-the year 1991.
Frankie died today and I am devastated.
I think Titus is distraught, and needs a cafe post.
Bryant was moved back to suburban Philadelphia as a high school student. He had come from Italy where he had become fluent in Italian, Spanish and English and had competency in Latin. He was, suffice to say, cut off from the "culture" of his black contemporaries. Jim Brown says this background disqualifies Bryant from being authentically black. It is enough to make one weep. Because that is as true a statement as ever sprang from Brown's mouth and sums up the sentiments of a swath of America that believes an educated free thinking black is not black at all.
Ah, Michael?
Obama?
One tiny step toward the limits of the plantation and all hell will break loose. Kobe better watch out.
You mean the "edge" of the plantation. We can already how limiting it is even when people sit smack in the middle of it and play along.
Hagar
His son would look like Trayvon.
he's been called "somewhat confused about culture because he was brought up in another country" like Dear Leader.
but he was un-confused enough to figure out that what he said was going to bring the tribal (progressive tribe) down on his head. Hence the back tracking tweets. Forward, America!!
I would think that Kobe Bryant might have a different opinion on estate taxes, higher taxes on capital gains, and higher taxes on those in the upper income brackets than many progressives. I bet Jim Brown and most of Bryant's fellow NBA players aren't one hundred percent behind higher taxes on the wealthy either. Best to shut up about such things and show solidarity with Trayvon.......Talk about wealth inequality generally focuses in on corporate CEOs and bankers, but there's also been a quantum jump in athlete salaries. Except for a few superstars, most athletes used to have to drive delivery trucks in the off season. In the interests of fairness, no professional athlete should be paid more than one hundred times the salary of a greens keeper or ticket taker.
Refreshingly I saw Stephen A Smith defend Kobe from the rants of Roland Martin questioning Kobe's blackness.
It' s not within Martin's limited thinking to understand his views are more in line with the KKK than MLK.
Were I a successful black man, I would revel in the hatred of the leftist slave masters and their charges.
Trayvon Martin, the idea having been put in his head by that idiot girl on the phone with him, decided to do a little Gay-bashing, instead of just going 'home'. Ended up getting shot dead, for his trouble.
That's what I think happened.
He was shot while startin' something with someone who he thought was an ass-cracker.
Now THAT is what I call a difficult narrative for Progressives to figure out how to handle.
There has got to be tight control of the Kobe Bryants. Others need to see that if you step out of line and think for yourself, you'll be pounced upon.
Want to continue in your nice, easy, comfortable life? Then keep your mouth shut. Unless you know how to two the party line.
I get where Bryant's coming from. Being black in Europe is a totally different experience in Europe from the US (or so I hear; it's not like I know anything about either one). It's deracialized in a way that it isn't in the US -- in the same way that being Turkish is a racial category in Germany, and a vague ethnicity in the US.
There was a time when "Yaz'ah Boss" was said to the white man. It's different now. It's said to Sharpton, Jackson and the rest. Is this progress?
There was a book out a while ago Projects Girl, I think, written by an African-American woman from projects in the States living in Paris. She said she could speak French like a native but didn't. If she had an American accent she was treated like an American. If she spoke like a native French speaker the French assumed she was North African and treated her accordingly, which was really racist. So yes, being a "Black American" in Europe would most likely be very different than being Black in America. By the way, Kareem Abdul Jabar was of West Indies descent. (As are Colin Powell and Eric Holder.) The life experiences of those individuals is different from that of Southern Blacks. Like most monoliths, once a good look is taken they aren't so monolithic.
This the same guy that beat a rape charge because the woman was a slut, and threw his teammates under the bus to deflect criticism when the story broke?
He beat the rape charge because ther e was substantial doubt regarding the issue of consent.
Jason Whitlock wrote, "Once you add facts, Kobe sounds like he's promoting Rush Limbaugh's opening monologue."
There's nothing in Whitlock's column that would justify his writing this comment. It was intended to be very hurtful. As for Whitlock himself, the very well-off Affirmative Action sportswriter who just spent the past week in the comfortable ESPN bubble co-hosting "Pardon The Interruption" with one of his white pals, these days he's no more an "authentic black" than most of the multi-millionaire black athletes he writes about. All of them are as far from Trayvon Martin's life situation as you can get with a $20 million contract to play professional ball.
I have a lot more respect for Kobe Bryant after reading these articles.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
That is what happened
So, the black commentariat is basically saying that a multi-ethnic society is impossible.
We wasted much time and effort even TRYING to do so.
Nice to know. I think it's time we cut our losses.
The left will have Kobe Crack MCing in no time.
"somewhat confused about culture because he was brought up in another country."
And yet, Obama's years growing up in Indonesia clarified his understanding about America? Hey Martha, which way is the wind blowing today?
There's black, and then there's black-black.
Bring your dog whistles to the next Lakers game.
the system did not work
Actually, it did. Exactly as the framers intended it to.
It's nice when there's, like, 30 posts and I can answer the majority of them with one sentence, regarding that slave-driving plantation owner, Martin Luther King, to put this Kobe business in it's proper cultural perspective vs. what y'all tell each other about blacks, yourselves, the Republican Party, history, and reality:
"We rate the statement False."
That feels so gooood!
And Titus, Frankie Knuckles' death was the one thing my friends and I were all talking about yesterday, so yeah, it was quite the shock. 59 years old just seems crazy,...
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