So we’re heading out for NYC for a week, so while I will try to do some blogging, it might be somewhat patchy and unpredictable. NYC Pandagonians: I’ll be doing readings at KGB Bar on Tuesday at 7PM and at Bluestockings on Thursday at 7PM. Hope to see y’all there.

I feel I should comment on the Indy win for Danica Patrick, because it’s a clear example of how Choads Who Love “Science” are very selective about when biological essentialism is extremely valid to them, and when they forget that was a line of argument altogether. Sexists love to trot out the fact that men are, on average, stronger than women, on average, though of course that rule doesn’t say much about individuals. Diana Taurasi could probably lay out some of your skinny geek dudes out there. But it is true that men are bigger and stronger than women to a degree that you’d have to seek extremes like that, and in athletics, there’s probably never going to be a time when women can compete on an equal playing ground with men in sports that require brute strength.

But there are many other physical skills, and the thing is that women are, on average, better than men at a lot of them. Again, individuals vary, but on average women are smaller, have better reflexes, more flexibility and more endurance in some regards. Which means that, all other things being equal, women probably should be the majority of fighter pilots and race car drivers. And yet they are not, which can’t but mean that there’s actual (gasp!) ingrained sexism pushing women away from these professions. In fact, there’s an irony to the fact that the same guys who probably take potshots about Patrick’s “unfair” advantage of being small by virtue of her gender would faint at the suggestion that men in football or basketball be handicapped so that women can play with them.

Of course, I don’t know much about sports, so I fully expect to be harumphed at in short order.

Wow, this is a telling little light shone into the anxious masculinity that defines the conservative “revolution”. (Via.) Apparently, Brett Favre teared up at his retirement press conference, an understandable action considering the high emotions that have to be flying as you end a career as prestigious as his. And Laura Ingraham, who knows her audience very well, decided this was a good opportunity to call Favre a woman.

“All these years, and I didn’t know there was a woman quarterback in the NFL.”

“Brett Favre…we’re watching this in the studio, obviously retiring from the NFL, great quarterback, handsome 38-year-old man, he gets up there and he does this press conference that was frankly one of the most embarrassing things I have ever seen.”

“That’s a great message for young boys. ‘Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby.”

Then, in her best impersonation of a crying toddler with its favorite toy taken away, she wah-wah-wah’s while uttering in a mocking tone, “It’s about me, it was never about me, but it is about me, bla, bla, bla” before returning to her regular voice and stating, “I could not believe what I was seeing.”

Unfortunately, the reaction from too many sporting outlets has been, essentially, “Nuh-uh! He’s earned the right to cry a little without having his masculinity taken from him. And you’re not a woman, so there!” Which really isn’t probably going to hurt her feelings, because clearly she doesn’t think much of women to consider it an insult to call someone a woman.

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We’ve moved from praying same-sex attractions away to playing them away. Wayne Besen of the educational organization Truth Wins Out, which challenges the “ex-gay” machine’s assertions that one can kneel and beg for deliverance into successful heterosexuality, has released a series of videos that show just how delusional and harmful such programs as Exodus International can be.

In this clip, former major league baseball player and out gay man Billy Bean, discusses the fantasy of the “ex-gay” movement that forcing gay men to play sports “to butch up” is therapy that brings inner heterosexuality to the surface.

Exodus’s PR machine claims homos are beating down the door for help.

Exodus International has seen a 59 percent increase in its member agencies, growing from 117 in 2003 to more than 200 in 2008. The ministry also is receiving more requests for resources and speaking engagements. In 2007, more than half of the attendees at the ministry’s annual conference were first-timers. Exodus is planning additional conferences.

…Melissa Fryrear, director of the gender issues department at Focus on the Family and a speaker at Love Won Out conferences, said the growth at Exodus is a sign of the times.

Professional heterosexual Melissa Fryrear: “As someone who lived homosexually for almost a decade, I know from firsthand experience that there is another side of the lesbian culture, and it is anything but glamorous.

“Similar to Exodus’ experience, in our Love Won Out ministry we are also hearing from so many men and women who no longer want to live a gay or lesbian identity,” she said. “They are discontented living homosexually, convinced of God’s truth about sexuality and desirous for God to radically transform their lives.

While that kind of batsh*ttery can easily be dismissed, the psychological damage caused by reparative therapy to men and and women struggling to come to terms with the fact that they are gay is horrifying. Look at this tale of abuse suffered by a man in Canada who sought help for his same-sex attractions and ended up victimized by his “therapist.” It’s below the fold.
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Say it, brother. How many ways can you say Charles Barkley is the bomb? A gay-affirming black man in American team sports, calling out the bigotry of the fundies, and bluntly blows them out of the water on live TV. Look at what he said on CNN.

Hey, I live in Arizona. I have got great respect for Senator McCain. Great respect. But I don’t like the way the Republicans are taking this country. Every time I hear the word “conservative,” it makes me sick to my stomach, because they’re really just fake Christians, as I call them. That’s all they are. But I just — I’m going to vote Democratic no matter what.

…BLITZER: All right. One quick point before I let you go. You used the phrase “fake Christians” for conservatives. Explain what you’re talking about.

BARKLEY: Well, I think they — they want to be judge and jury. Like, I’m for gay marriage. It’s none of my business if gay people want to get married. I’m pro-choice. And I think these Christians — first of all, they’re supposed to be — they’re not supposed to judge other people. But they’re the most hypocritical judge of people we have in this country. And it bugs the hell out of me. They act like their Christians. And they’re not forgiving at all.

BLITZER: So you’re going to get a lot of feedback on this one, Charles.

BARKLEY: They can’t do anything to me. I don’t work for them.

BLITZER: You feel comfortable saying all that?

BARKLEY: I feel very comfortable saying I’m pro-choice, and I’m for gay marriage. Very comfortable.

BLITZER: But you can’t lump all these conservatives as being fake. A lot of them obviously — most of them are very, very sincere in their religious beliefs.

BARKLEY: Well, they should read the part about they’re not supposed to judge other people. They forget that one when it doesn’t fit what they want it to say. “

A fundie press release was quickly issued blasting the former NBA star. It’s after the jump.
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Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy had a minor, um incident/rant a few weeks ago, where he way overreacted to an article about his team. Considering that he mocked the writer for not having children, one suspects that the strength of his reaction might have had something to do with the sex of the critic that caused him so much pain.

Punkass Marc retorts by remixing the speech with “Eye of the Tiger”. Enjoy!

The TV is tuned to ESPN, and of course, they’re doing a sob piece grasping for some way to draw a connection between Virginia Tech’s football team playing football and the tragic shooting last spring. God, lit candles, school spirit, it’s all very grotesque. I wish that just once during one of these sob pieces trying to create a relationship between a sporting event and some senseless tragedy, someone would say, “Well Tragedy X taught me that there is no god, the universe is indifferent to human suffering, and life has no outside meaning, so it’s up to us to make our own meaning. Which is why I like sports.”

But of course, that would violate about 15 different unspoken rules about how the TV makes meaning out of tragedy, so even if anyone said it, it would never get on air.

According to at least a few of my Internets correspondents, the one thing they regret most about my decision to blow up my humble old blog and disperse myself across the blogosphere is that I don’t do Jamie updates very often anymore. So here’s a Jamie update for at least a few of my Internets correspondents!

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The Seattle Sonics/Storm co-owners Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon were busted by Dan Savage’s Slog yesterday as blogger Josh Feit reported that the two together have funded Gary Bauer’s Americans United to Preserve Marriage to the tune of over $1 million.

Talk about enthusiastic supporters of the effort to “protect marriage” — the WNBA team owners opened their wallets for the failed presidential candidate and moralist with a contribution of $250K the day Bauer’s group was formed.

Feit called the Sonics/Storm front office and asked Sonics/Storm spokesperson Tom Savage what was the deal.

I asked Savage what a gay friendly team like the Storm had to say about two of its new owners, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, kicking in $1.1 million to Gary Bauer’s anti-gay marriage 527, Americans United to Preserve Marriage.

I was clear with him what I thought: It’s a direct affront to a big bloc of Storm fans to know that ticket sales are going into the pockets of men who were funding (or started it would seem) an anti-gay marriage group.

The mouthpiece said he’d get back to him and lo and behold, no call was forthcoming. As the storm clouds rolled in (pun intended), someone eventually had to come out of the tornado shelter and talk to the media.

Read the lame spin after the flip.

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Hasn’t anyone told him that it’s probably best to zip it? Tim Hardaway was recently interviewed by ESPN’s Scoop Jackson (a personal friend of the former Heat player), and it’s a lengthy piece that is both apologetic (for the media debacle and using the word “hate”) and yet boldly affirms his base homophobia, which isn’t unexpected, given the vitriol of the original comments.

Here’s a snippet of the Good:

Like I said when I heard the interview, when I heard myself, it sounded bad. “Them being in another country and they shouldn’t be in America ?” That should have never come out. I was like, “Damn, I messed that up. Damn, I don’t believe that came out my mouth. Damn, that’s not me.”

Yeah, I took the wrong road. I should have been smart about what I was saying and how I expressed my feelings because I offended a lot of folks. And not knowing the magnitude on how this all escalated. I mean, I offended my family, my friends, the NBA, the gay community, people I don’t know, the [Miami] Heat organization. I realize that I offended a lot of people and caused a lot of friction on a touchy subject. And now it’s my job to make it right.

…So in your mind do you want forgiveness or are you just going to try to get yourself straight?
I want both. I want forgiveness and I want to get my s— together.

And that entails
?Right now, learning. Learning that gay people are really no different than a lot of other people. Learning that they work hard, they do things in the community, they are responsible for building parks, rec centers, providing safe environments for kids, just things I had never associated with them before. [This last week] has opened up my eyes to the gay population and what they do. I’m getting a lot of knowledge about them that I didn’t have. Which is going to make me a better person. And if it doesn’t, then I’m a damn fool.

The Bad, or at least, the humorously Bad, is after the flip.
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My friend Kathy of Birmingham Blues wrote an interesting diary over my pad about Hardaway and columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s take on it, Homophobic outburst may do some good. I took the liberty of adding to the bottom of her post the contrary, homophobic bleatings of Michael Medved at Townhall.com, who actually says Where Tim Hardaway Was Right because you just can’t get a better juxtaposition than this.

Leonard Pitts: Good for Tim Hardaway

Kathy: Ummm, wait a minute — that doesn’t sound like my beloved Leonard Pitts.  And actually, it isn’t how it sounds.  Mr. Pitts points out that Hardaway’s honest, in-your-face homophobia helps to rip the socially acceptable veil off this particular bigotry, just as Bull Conner and his dogs showed the true face of segregationism.

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a man named Bull Connor. In 1963, he was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala. Back then, Birmingham was pleased to be considered the most segregated city in the South. Then civil rights demonstrators under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. came to town. Connor directed the city’s response.

When you see those famous images of dogs attacking unarmed marchers and firefighters directing high-pressure hoses at men and women singing freedom songs, you are seeing Connor’s work. He was a hateful cuss, but there was a useful purity in his hate: The sheer violence of his response to the civil rights movement brought international condemnation and irresistible pressure for change.

Segregation was, for many people, still socially respectable in that era. Politicians defended it with honeyed euphemisms like ‘’state’s rights,'’ and preachers assured their flocks that it was God’s will. So you could be a segregationist and still feel good about yourself, still feel moral.

Connor inadvertently made that impossible. How moral can you feel when a guy is loosing dogs on children in your name? Connor stripped segregation naked. He made people face it for what it was.

And perhaps Tim Hardaway and others like him will do the same for homophobia.  It’s easy to hold onto casual disdain and erroneous assumptions when the people around you support your cruelty and self-deception.  Who’s being hurt, after all?  As long as the victims are invisible, unknown Others, it’s no big deal.  Anyway, why can’t those blacks gays keep to their place and stop demanding equal rights flaunting their “lifestyle”?  Their lives aren’t that bad; they just like to complain.  Right?

But then the world sees Bull Connor siccing dogs on children, spraying them with high pressure hoses, treating them as less than human while they respond, as they’ve responded for so long, with dignity and courage.  Much the same way the world heard Tim Hardaway go after John Amaechi, who had done nothing more than publicly acknowledge that he’s gay:

‘’I hate gay people,'’ he said, “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.'’

This wasn’t some socially acceptable expression of discomfort — it was flat-out “I hate you, and I wish you didn’t exist.”  And it’s the true feeling that lies behind a lot of the “hate the sin, love the sinner” crap that gets dished out by people like James Dobson, who insist they only want to “cure” a “disorder”.

There is something bracing in the matter-of-fact clarity of Hardaway’s declaration. He cut through the clutter of weasel words and half-truths that traditionally surrounds homophobia, showed us what lies behind honeyed euphemisms ('’traditional values'’) and claims to speak for God.

…So often, we use words to distance ourselves from what we feel, to hide our true meaning, even from ourselves. Hardaway used words to say exactly what he felt, and it is possible to abhor what he felt and yet appreciate that he does not make you guess or infer.

Think again of Connor, screaming obscenities under an Alabama sun. To hear him, to hear Hardaway, is to know that you have finally come down to it, finally met the beast that lives behind euphemism and weasel words.

And you — all of us — can fight it.

***

From Pam, your editorial blogmistress: Instead of writing a separate post on this topic, I thought it might be appropriate to juxtapose the thoughts of Leonard Pitts to the those of Michael Medved, who directly challenges a comparison of homophobia of  Hardaway situation to racial animus of years past.

Read after the flip.
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Tim “I hate gay people” Hardaway has accepted an open-hearted bold offer from North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns — the official has invited the radioactive former NBA star to spend a routine day with him. (Miami Herald):

‘’We’re just trying to show him that there are living, breathing people that just happen to be gay,'’ said North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns, who lives with his partner of 23 years and an adopted daughter.

The plan is for Hardaway to join Burns and his family for a routine weekday at the mayor’s office and home — doing things like dropping off Burns’ child at school, meeting with constituents and dinner with the family.

Hardaway has been hit hard since the broadcast on the local AM radio station 790 The Ticket, in which he said, ‘’I don’t like to be around gay people'’ and `”it shouldn’t be in the U.S. or the world.'’

Will it do anything to open Hardaway’s eyes? I’m not sure anyone with such a hard heart — and blunt honesty about his feelings about gays — is sincerely ready for change. But this humanization and reality check that gay people are simply everyday people cannot hurt.

What do you think?

***

Watch Today’s Ann Curry crack up on the air laughing at Hardaway’s comments (via Good As You).

Related:
* The class of John Amaechi
* Tim Hardaway: ‘I hate gay people’
* Hardaway’s tortured apology
* ESPN message board topic: “Tim Hardaway is right.”
* ESPN’s Outside the Lines, featuring the full interview with infamous remarks, as well as comments from Amaechi.

Hat tip, PageOneQ.

“Well, you know, I hate gay people. I let it be known, I don’t like gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people. Yeah, I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world for that or in the United States for that. So, yeah, I don’t like it.”
– the former Miami Heat guard doesn’t hold back (CBS report here)

This level of homophobia is outlandish. How insecure must former NBA star Tim Hardaway be about his masculinity to feel threatened by the thought of playing on a team with someone gay. His feelings are so strong that he would ask to be traded rather than play alongside someone he knew to be gay.

A week after retired center John Amaechi became the first active or former NBA player to publicly acknowledge he was gay, one of the most popular players in Heat franchise history offered a blunt view on homosexuality Wednesday during a radio interview.

Former Heat guard Tim Hardaway, who had been making public
appearances for the NBA, said on Miami-based 790 The Ticket he would not have tolerated a gay player on his team and would have asked to have been traded in such a situation or would have asked to have the gay teammate be traded.

…Hardaway was asked if his opinion would be different if a top-level teammate acknowledged being gay.

“If he were that great, something would still have to give,” he said. “People would feel uncomfortable with that. If you’re not gay, nobody in that locker room would feel comfortable with that person on your team.”

Let’s see, something would “have to give” if, say, an in-his-prime legend like Dr. J., Magic Johnson or Wilt Chamberlain happened to be gay and was on his team.

I hate to say it Tim, but you probably did play with homos on your team; and for god’s sake, you played for Miami and still maintain a home in South Florida — I hope you don’t spend any time in South Beach lest you catch TEH GAY.

This outburst by Hardaway was quickly condemned by the NBA, which had been promoting his appearances at NBA-related events. NBA Commissioner David Stern announced that Hardaway would no longer represent the league at public appearances: “It is inappropriate for him to be representing us given the disparity between his views and ours.”

In a CBS interview that gives the man another chance to clarify his statements, Hardaway stood firm and said that if he learned of a gay family member he wouldn’t talk to them. What a role model.

Hardaway later gave a tepid apology in a phone interview with Fort Lauderdale’s WSVN, saying “Yes, I regret it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said I hate gay people or anything like that. That was my mistake.” In the same breath he then says “I just don’t condone it being in the locker room.” What an apology. Somehow I think he was more concerned about the possible impact on his wallet and the fact that now people know what he truly believes in his heart.

Every time I read crap like this, I think of White House spokesbot Tony Snow’s infamous quote on racism that “it’s rapidly becoming an ugly memory.”

Not if you’re trying to rent an apartment from this man:

The Justice Department on Monday filed a discrimination suit against Los Angeles Clippers owner and real estate mogul Donald Sterling, accusing him of favoring Korean tenants while seeking to exclude African Americans and families with children from his apartment buildings in Los Angeles County.

The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, charged Sterling with violating the Fair Housing Act, a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, by engaging in “discrimination on the basis of race, national origin and familial status.” It also named Sterling’s wife, Rochelle, and three Sterling companies and trusts.

,,,In the seven-page complaint, Justice Department lawyers said Sterling’s agents at various times have refused to rent to non-Koreans at their buildings in Koreatown, and have been guilty of “creating, maintaining, and perpetuating an environment that is hostile” to existing non-Korean tenants.

According to the lawsuit, the Sterling companies also have refused to rent to African Americans at properties in Beverly Hills, and have misrepresented the availability of units to blacks and families with children.

This isn’t the first time Sterling has been on the bigot hot seat.

The case is an echo of a private lawsuit filed against the Sterlings in 2003 on behalf of about 20 mostly black and Latino tenants or prospective tenants. According to that suit, filed by the Housing Rights Center, a Los Angeles nonprofit group, Sterling had told members of his staff that he did not like to rent to Latinos or African Americans because “Hispanics smoke, drink and just hang around the building,” and “black tenants smell and attract vermin.”

This bit of fun and games must cost Sterling plenty, since the article mentions a confidential settlement that was said to be “one of the largest ever obtained in this type of case,” and “a significant and wide-ranging nonmonetary component and public benefit.” The only figure that was made public was the $4.9 million paid to cover the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

He doesn’t mind paying blacks to shoot hoops for him, he just doesn’t want to rent to them.

There’s nothing like a fundie day at the ball park. What on earth can the Braves management be thinking? This boggles the mind — the Focus on the Anus functionaries spread the word by passing out “gift packages” containing anti-gay materials to folks in the stands.

The Atlanta Braves is the first Major League Baseball team to participate in the Christian “Faith Day�? — a promotional event co-sponsored by the anti-gay Focus on the Family to get evangelical Christians to pack the stands of ballparks across the country.

The event that attracted some 3,000 members of local Christian churches to Turner Field on July 27, which included team speakers and Christian musicians, was begun in 2002 by Third Coast Sports. Until last week, Third Coast Sports’ “Faith Days�? were only held at minor league games.

“Focus on the Family is pleased to support these community events where professional athletes and top Christian musicians share their faith in Christ,�? said Steve Maegdlin, Focus on the Family senior vice president. “We are looking forward to impacting families at an event that is good, wholesome fun for the entire family.�?

The press release goes on to say that during games, Focus on the Family will distribute gift packages for parents, teens and clergy representing a variety of Focus on the Family’s family outreach ministries.

These include the Focus on Parenting program (www.focusonyourchild.com) — which features a “Hot Topic�? about children and homosexuality and how gay activist groups are “targeting�? public schools — and TroubledWith.com, a site for individuals and families in crisis that also lists homosexuality as a topic.

BTW, the Braves have held gay days, but none in recent memory, according to the article. It sounds like there was a fundie infiltration in the front office. Another fun fact: Braves pitcher and fundie John Smoltz once compared gay marriage to bestiality (”What’s next? Marrying an animal?”).

Jill, in the comments at my pad, said: “God responded to “Faith Day” by having the New York Mets kick the living crap out of the Braves last weekend in their first sweep of the Braves in the latter’s home park since 1985, thereby knocking the Tomahawk Choppers out of any hope of making the playoffs this year.”

***

UPDATE: That was fast — Think Progress reports that the Braves have disinvited Daddy Dobson’s drones — they won’t be passing out their hate literature at the upcoming Faith Days coming on Aug. 13 and Aug. 26.

Unfortunately, Focus on the Family remains a cosponsor of several other Faith Day events at baseball games this summer, which are organized by a group called Third Coast Sports. Email the CEO of Third Coast — mike@thirdcoastsports.com — and urge him to completely sever their ties with the anti-gay group.

Whoops! I just found out the game starts way earlier than I thought. Open thread for fans of both teams, though my loyalties are indicated above. Be nice!

Update: A game that may have been decided by a fight during some downtime. Who knew? Picture updated because France lost, which sucketh. But because of that headbutt, I have no choice but to accept that they deserved it. But if it really was a nipple tweaking, well, huh.

I noticed some, um, off-topic excitement in the comments here today. All right, I’ll confess my loyalties going into the finals—France all the way, baby! For reasons that are probably pretty obvious.* Open thread on the World Cup. Feel free to tell Ms. Marcotte to fuck off because you’re rooting for the deeply corrupt Italians.

*No, it’s not because all liberals are secret Frenchmen.

It seems ridiculous that we’re even talking about something so obvious, but this is a debate that has been stirring up this year. Women’s tennis is surely as exciting as the men’s game, so why can’t these athletes be rewarded equally?

Good question — and it’s being asked a lot across the pond. Tony Blair is in favor of equal pay for women athletes at Wimbledon, as is John McEnroe and Virgin boss and Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Global Advisory Council Member, Sir Richard Branson.

Speaking at the Tour’s pre-Wimbledon welcome reception for the players in London last night, Sir Richard added; “Women players have every right to feel strongly about the issue of equal prize money at Wimbledon. The outdated position adopted by the All England Club tarnishes the good name of the world’s greatest tennis tournament and sends a completely negative signal to women everywhere.”

How bad is the disparity in payout? The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour cites figures official Wimbledon Tennis Championships 2006 prize money and it’s staggering – male singles and doubles players will receive over £600,000 more than the women. That’s scandalous. The U.S. Open and Australian Open don’t have a gender-based pay scale when it comes to awards.

Jay over at Lassiter Space weighs in:

It’s worth noting that the tournament in Dubai (in the United Arab Emirates) offers equal prize money to the men’s and women’s winners. So moderate Arab nations are willing to pay up for equality’s sake, but not Wimbledon. Ironic?

I’ll close my feminist rant with this. Sports Illustrated suggests that– for what the women bring to the game– they should be paid MORE than the men! Naturally, I agree. But for now I’m happy being pragmatic.

So you might be asking yourself, “Philosophical meanderings are fun and all, but weren’t you at the NBA Finals 2nd game last night, Amanda?” Answer: yes. And if you care much about that, you probably already know the Mavericks destroyed and managed to guess that my boyfriend and I went home happy about that.

I’d never gone to an NBA game before, so it was a little surreal making a finals game my first. Beyond that, I can’t say much about the sport that won’t bore you to tears, but I will say something that might be interesting from a feminist perspective. The Mavericks have this group of fans called the Maniaacs.

For good of for ill, these guys are a corporate whore version of more organic, fan-driven fan clubs of yore. At one point, they came out and did what could only be described as a parody of the dance routines regular cheerleaders do. It even involved the shedding of some clothes. Under the right circumstances, that sort of thing could be really funny. Cheerleading is irritating and needs to be skewered, after all. But the problem is we’d been subjected all night to non-ironic dance routines by these women.

It wasn’t possible to be amused by this lame parody when you know they don’t really mean it. But then again, I’m mostly just amazed the cheerleading is still hanging on. From what I can tell, the number of people who actually enjoy it is vanishingly small.

None of this is to say that I didn’t have a blast. In fact, I’m surprised I didn’t lose my voice.

There are more important things in this world than survival. Like football.

Hundreds of Katrina evacuees who fled to Tallahassee seeking refuge from the storm have been politely told by their hotels and motels to leave this weekend to make room for a football game: FSU vs. Miami.

Hotel space is traditionally scarce any time the Florida State Seminoles take on the University of Miami Hurricanes, one of the choicest tickets on the college football schedule.

But with hotels packed with families from Louisiana and Mississippi, and room space booked for Monday’s game for months, hotel operators say they are trying to accommodate the evacuees but have no choice but to nudge them out.

‘’We have to let them know what’s going on in town and they’re going to have to leave,'’ said Angie Rayman, manager at the Howard Johnson. “Many of them are trying to get closer to home anyway.'’

Granted, home’s under 14 feet of water and locked down under martial law, but the parking lot is technically closer…

Republicans have decided that the major problem with Major League Baseball is that it lets the wrong kind of people in. If I were a different kind of guy (i.e.: a Republican), I might note that Soros is a Jewishy kinda guy, what with his Jewishness and all.

However, I do realize that not everything is about anti-Semitism. Most of the time, it’s just about anti-liberalism, spiced with cronyism.

In case you were wondering, here’s Fred, and in case you were really wondering, a bit more on Malek’s background.

He was also deputy director of CREEP and one of the guys who worked on drawing up Jew lists for Nixon. (And what’s Soros again?)

Let’s just put it this way: if Democrats in Congress were declaring that the “wrong type of person” shouldn’t be allowed to own a baseball team, and the person in question were, say, a black Christian conservative, the Democrats in question would be crucified before the day was out. It makes you wonder why a liberal Jew being shunned away for a conservative who helped draw up anti-Semitic target lists isn’t getting nearly as much attention.

Oh, and if you were wondering if Davis is merely touching on those two forms of bigotry, fear not - he’s also xenophobic!

Of course, the Mariners were owned by furriner company Nintendo, and even now is majority owned by the Japanese company’s American subsidiary. And, of course, the sheer number of foreign players in baseball make it positively un-American. The Nationals, being a “national” team, should get rid of all foreign players on their team. Armas, Ayala, Carrasco, Hernandez, Kim, Loaiza, Guzman and Guillen should all be kicked off the team, and that’s not even including Puerto Rican players who, of course, aren’t real Americans. Unfortunately, MLB doesn’t keep track of religious or political affiliations, but I’m sure one of those red-blooded Americans left is secretly a liberal commie atheist Jew.

Keep baseball American. Except where it’s convenient not to.

Through Hugo, I find out that Carrie Lukas is actually trying to argue that Bernie Ecclestone’s weird comment to Danica Patrick about how women should wear white like all domestic appliances and Patrick’s shrugging off of said comment somehow means that feminism is bad.

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9:18: Did someone tell the Spurs that they’re in the Finals? The team came out looking like the Pistons had just kidnapped their families.

One more time for people in the back who didn’t get it–Women can’t compete with men because we can’t keep up unless we win and then it’s because we have an unfair advantage. Got that?

There’s always someone’s gotta whine when a woman gets anything. After Danica Patrick placed 4th yesterday in the Indy 500, Robby Gordon stepped up to be the whining crying baby.

How much you want to be the “equalization” he is thinking of has nothing to do with weight requirements and everything to do with a genital check before you get into the car?

But let’s not forget the important lesson learned from Patrick’s stellar performance yesterday–any advantages women have must be handicapped and any advantages men have must be lorded over women or puppies are killed or something like that.

Via Tbogg.

Update: I acknowledged it in comments, but for the top so people don’t miss it. Gordon made these comments before the race, in the grand tradition of setting up the excuses before an expected result. He has a personal bugaboo about weight requirements, no doubt because he’s a big guy. Suffice it to say, I think that if the officials of the Indy 500 don’t want a weight requirement, that’s their pregotative. Gordon appears to have reconsidered how such a comment would come off and has left a statement indicating he doesn’t resent that Patrick takes advantage of her small size.

I will add that it’s disheartening to see female athletes have the fact that women are on average smaller than men thrown at them all the time as reason that women supposedly can’t compete against men. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it’s not. From that vantage, it’s only fair that when women’s smaller stature is an advantage, it is time to gloat, but instead the first thing the media pumps out is how unfair it is for a woman to have an advantage. As Ice pointed out, Gordon has been whining about this for a long time about men, so he’s just being used as a tool by the media to undermine Patrick’s good showing and create controversy.

I still feel that if men can wield their larger size as an advantage in some sports, then by all means women should be able to wield our smaller size in others.

Steve Gilliard remarks on the annoying case of Kwame Brown, the never-was number one pick of the Washington Wizards straight out of high school who, through a mix of Michael Jordan’s ego and a bad coaching situation (Doug Collins, otherwise known as the coaching version of Ahmad Rashad), has become pretty damn close to a bust. Brown faked an illness in order to protest his lack of playing time, and was understandably benched. Gilliard’s reaction:

Actually, there’s no “for every, there’s an every” here. Let’s look around the NBA playoffs. New Jersey - headed by superstar Vince Carter who admits he quit in Toronto, and played worse to get traded. Miami - aided by Alonzo Mourning, who blew off his duties in New Jersey to get traded. Seattle - their middle’s anchored by Jerome James, who until about a week and a half ago admittedly spent most of his career not trying and not giving a damn about anyone but himself. Houston - led by superstar Tracy McGrady who stopped trying in Orlando to force a trade.
(more…)

The current Sports Person take on the Phil Jackson coaching situation has been as such: he’ll take LA or NY over Cleveland in a heartbeat, because they’re bigger markets. Now, Phil Jackson is a lot of things, but he’s most definitely not an idiot - the only real difference between New York and Golden State right now is the amount of rafter decoration. New York has no space to get a team-changing player, nothing to offer any discontented superstar on the trading/free agent block, and the Nets moving to Brooklyn within the decade. The best you could hope for is that the Knicks get Jackson, struggle through a year with Marbury and Houston, and somehow manage to free themselves from enough bad contracts to lure LeBron to the Big Apple after his rookie contract’s up.

Of course, you could also make the same argument for any of a dozen positions - just screw around for a year and dump salaries until LeBron gets free. Of course, there’s this place where he already plays, that also has money to sweep up some key free agents. Cleave Land, I believe it’s called…

But it assumes something about Jackson that I’ve never quite found convincing - he’ll take the largest spotlight possible. It seemed to be the accepted rationale for him moving from Chicago to L.A., which often overlooks the fact that a staff of Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach and Pat Riley couldn’t have saved the post-Michael Bulls in the half-decade that followed the team’s dismantling. Jackson wasn’t so much seeking out the spotlight as he was getting the hell out of Dodge. He’s much more likely to take the best situation than he is to take the biggest spotlight (for instance, note Jackson’s attempts at making a contender out of the 93-95 non-Jordan Bulls). New York’s out, and Los Angeles…well, ask Lamar Odom how much he likes being Kobe’s Pippen. Who, exactly, is the Bryant Lake Show supposed to attract?

Cleveland makes the most sense, although the team’s unceremonious (and unwise) dumping of Paul Silas makes them a slightly more risky bet for Jackson, who’s got a wee bit of a legacy riding on his choice. The last thing he wants to do is become the post-Lakers Pat Riley, and the second-to-last thing he wants to do is become remembered as the O’Neal-Bryant-Payton-Malone-Other Guy Jackson, who led the most purposefully stacked team in NBA history to a defeat by an underdog, better-coached Detroit team. If he’s the same guy who led Jordan, Pippen and Rodman to three championships with the support of a glorified CBA team, then this is a decision that’s based as much on the ability of his next team to justify his reputation as it is a team that can afford to pay for it.

Yglesias weighs in on last night’s game. I’m finding myself surprised at just how boring the Kings/Sonics series is, and how much I’m liking the new Baby Bulls.

Bill Simmons had a good piece yesterday that sums up my feelings on Reggie Miller perfectly - a great entertainer in the body of a pretty good player. I will also point out that the Reggie legend was helped in no small part by the fact that he saved his best performances for the Knicks, who just happen to be a major-market team. If he’d saved those performances for Atlanta or Milwaukee during playoff years, his legend would be a shadow of what it is now. Miller, more than perhaps any other player, was aided by the fact that he had the right enemy at the right time.