Now that I’ve hit my 50’s, I’ve begun seriously assessing my life choices and started doing what I can to make my peace with the world, and with my own conscience.
Time to ‘fess up, man up, and stand up for who I am, and what I believe as a human being, and as a Black man. Time to come out of the closet.
No, not that closet. This one: I am now, and always have been, a hockey fan.
I got hooked as a teenager, during the heyday of the Broad Street Bullies. There weren’t many African-American hockey fans then, but somehow Flyers mania slowly crept its way into the Black community. You’d occasionally see the familiar orange and black logo on barber shop windows or license plate frames. Some of us played hockey during gym period at Bartram High, and more than a few of my peers sported Bobby Clarke or Bernie Parent jerseys.
Now, as the Flyers return to the Stanley Cup Finals 35 years later, black Philadelphians still comprise a miniscule fraction of the region’s die-hard hockey fans. I don’t think there’s a particular animosity toward hockey among black folks per se, unless you count the fact that, as a group, we’re not fond of winter sports in general.
Sure, you’ll find us on ski slopes and ice skating rinks in increasing numbers, but let’s be honest, there probably aren’t many black folks who looked out their windows during last winter’s blizzards and said, “Whee! Fresh powder! Time to wax my board!”
Aversion to cold weather aside, there are quite a few other factors which more easily explain hockey’s slow, uphill battle for fans in minority communities.
First, there’s the fact that you just don’t see many of them on television. Right now there are fourteen Blacks in the National Hockey League, and while some have genuinely distinguished themselves, like the Calgary Flames' Jarome Iginla, who began this season as the first-ever Black captain of an NHL team, they’re still a pretty rare sight.
Donald Brashear was treated warmly by fans here when he played for the Flyers, and present goalie Ray Emery, while on the disabled list following hip surgery, was cheered when he was in the net earlier this season. I remember being surprised years ago the first time I saw NHL Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr without his mask. With all the hoopla about him being the best of the best, no one had mentioned his race – which I took as a sign of progress.
Most of the brothers in the NHL are Canadian, which brings us to the second reason hockey never caught on with America’s Black community. It’s just not as ingrained in the American psyche as football, baseball, and basketball. In Canada, hockey is king, and its toothless heroes’ names are whispered in reverence. In America, hockey is a second-tier sport – lagging far behind the big three. Compare the salaries of the top players in all four sports and you’ll see what I mean.
A third reason, and one that can’t be overlooked, is cost. Go to any sporting goods store. It can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars to outfit a kid for hockey – especially if you buy the top-of-the-line gear. Skates, sticks, helmet, pads, gloves – on and on and on. And Lord help you if the kid wants to be a goalie – just double the price of everything.
Basketballs, on the other hand, are twenty bucks. He needs no other equipment, other than the expensive sneakers you’ve already purchased, and would have been talked into buying anyway.
He can take that $20 basketball and walk no more than two or three blocks in any direction, any day of the week, and find a place to play, and willing players. Hockey is seasonal, regional, and even pick-up games have to be pre-arranged.
And here’s the question no parent wants to ask: what if he stinks?
If he turns out to be the world’s worst basketball player, you’re still only out $20. Seeing the seldom used basketball in his room won’t bother you, unlike looking at a mortgage payment’s worth of unused hockey equipment gathering dust in a corner.
Maybe now that the Flyers’ bandwagon is in full swing, other fans like me will come out of hiding, and confess their love for a sport that hasn’t always embraced them.
It could happen.
After all, until ten or twelve years ago, most of us felt the same way about golf.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Out To Pasture
It will be hard to imagine Pennsylvania politics without Arlen Specter. The 80-year old senior senator has been in Washington for 30 years – longer than anyone, ever - and a fixture in Philadelphia politics since before most of his constituents were born.
Many of the younger generation of voters in Tuesday’s primary know almost nothing of Specter other than the fact that he’s been around forever. Some may remember his prosecutorial grilling of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, but I doubt that incident swayed their vote. In fairness, it was also Specter who led the withering and relentless charge against Reagan high court nominee Robert Bork, during which “Borking” became a part of America’s political lexicon.
Few voters, I imagine, would recall his tenure as Philadelphia’s District Attorney or his unpopular defense of notorious Philadelphia murderer Ira Einhorn after he left office. Fewer still would identify him as the architect of the equally unpopular “single bullet theory” which the Warren Commission used to cement the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the JFK assassination.
Like Forrest Gump, at every historic event of the past half century, Arlen Specter happens to be standing there.
That wasn’t enough for Pennsylvania voters Tuesday, who sent their once-champion into forced retirement.
For the record, I don’t think it was the fact that he switched parties last year. I think most voters, me included, are more faithful to ideas and philosophies than they are to political parties. The whole party-switching thing was more ammunition for pundits and fellow politicians than the average Pennsylvanian. The fact that throughout his career as a Republican Specter remained popular among Democrats is proof enough of that.
And speaking of ammunition, I don’t even think Specter was undone by Joe Sestak’s explosive negative ad, which ran nonstop on airwaves the last few weeks of the campaign.
Surely you saw it. Specter, given the thumbs up by George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, smiles slyly at gathered reporters and says, “My change in party will allow me to be re-elected,” in the sleaziest, most self-satisfied voice you can imagine. Sure, Specter’s people whined about the quote being taken out of context, but by then the damage had been done.
My hat’s off to Sestak’s PR team. Nothing is more effective than using a candidate’s own words against him, and they did that brilliantly. For all the talk of voters being turned off by negative advertising, and all the promises of politicians to run issues-driven campaigns, Sestak’s ad proved that a well-placed knife in the ribs works every time.
He only won three of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties: Philadelphia, Dauphin, and Lackawanna. And only here in Philly did he do so convincingly with 64 percent of the vote. He barely squeaked by in Dauphin and Lackawanna, winning by fewer than 600 votes in both counties combined. Everywhere else, the previously little-known Sestak claimed victory.
In the end, I think most Pennsylvanians simply believe Specter has passed his ‘sell by’ date.
My landlord, who always talks politics while he’s collecting my rent, probably said it best. “Arlen Specter outlived his own constituency, that’s all,” he laughed. “People don’t really have anything against him, but it’s time to see what somebody else can do.”
True. If you’re going to talk about changing the machine, you can’t really have that discussion with someone who was there when the machine was built.
In a larger context, Tuesday’s race was not just important to Pennsylvania, but its far-reaching implications made big time national news. Chris Matthews taped his MSNBC show “Hardball” from Center City, and featured every available Democratic politician from Mayor Nutter to Governor Rendell to Congressman Bob Brady unsuccessfully pleading Specter’s case.
Some blamed President Obama for being notably absent from Pennsylvania these past weeks. He didn’t fly in to attend a Specter rally or fundraiser, and didn’t pose for photos with his arm around the old boy. Well, maybe the president is a bit gun shy about lending his full endorsement lately, as this has proven to do little for the candidate, but rather tends to rally the Teabaggers and anti-Obama crowd behind whoever is the opponent.
In recent months, Obama's endorsements and campaign appearances weren't enough to save Gov. Corzine's re-election bid in New Jersey, Creigh Deeds' run for governor in Virginia, or Martha Coakley's campaign in Massachusetts for the late Edward Kennedy's Senate seat.
All true, but probably not relevant. It was simply Specter’s time.
Many of the younger generation of voters in Tuesday’s primary know almost nothing of Specter other than the fact that he’s been around forever. Some may remember his prosecutorial grilling of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, but I doubt that incident swayed their vote. In fairness, it was also Specter who led the withering and relentless charge against Reagan high court nominee Robert Bork, during which “Borking” became a part of America’s political lexicon.
Few voters, I imagine, would recall his tenure as Philadelphia’s District Attorney or his unpopular defense of notorious Philadelphia murderer Ira Einhorn after he left office. Fewer still would identify him as the architect of the equally unpopular “single bullet theory” which the Warren Commission used to cement the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the JFK assassination.
Like Forrest Gump, at every historic event of the past half century, Arlen Specter happens to be standing there.
That wasn’t enough for Pennsylvania voters Tuesday, who sent their once-champion into forced retirement.
For the record, I don’t think it was the fact that he switched parties last year. I think most voters, me included, are more faithful to ideas and philosophies than they are to political parties. The whole party-switching thing was more ammunition for pundits and fellow politicians than the average Pennsylvanian. The fact that throughout his career as a Republican Specter remained popular among Democrats is proof enough of that.
And speaking of ammunition, I don’t even think Specter was undone by Joe Sestak’s explosive negative ad, which ran nonstop on airwaves the last few weeks of the campaign.
Surely you saw it. Specter, given the thumbs up by George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, smiles slyly at gathered reporters and says, “My change in party will allow me to be re-elected,” in the sleaziest, most self-satisfied voice you can imagine. Sure, Specter’s people whined about the quote being taken out of context, but by then the damage had been done.
My hat’s off to Sestak’s PR team. Nothing is more effective than using a candidate’s own words against him, and they did that brilliantly. For all the talk of voters being turned off by negative advertising, and all the promises of politicians to run issues-driven campaigns, Sestak’s ad proved that a well-placed knife in the ribs works every time.
He only won three of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties: Philadelphia, Dauphin, and Lackawanna. And only here in Philly did he do so convincingly with 64 percent of the vote. He barely squeaked by in Dauphin and Lackawanna, winning by fewer than 600 votes in both counties combined. Everywhere else, the previously little-known Sestak claimed victory.
In the end, I think most Pennsylvanians simply believe Specter has passed his ‘sell by’ date.
My landlord, who always talks politics while he’s collecting my rent, probably said it best. “Arlen Specter outlived his own constituency, that’s all,” he laughed. “People don’t really have anything against him, but it’s time to see what somebody else can do.”
True. If you’re going to talk about changing the machine, you can’t really have that discussion with someone who was there when the machine was built.
In a larger context, Tuesday’s race was not just important to Pennsylvania, but its far-reaching implications made big time national news. Chris Matthews taped his MSNBC show “Hardball” from Center City, and featured every available Democratic politician from Mayor Nutter to Governor Rendell to Congressman Bob Brady unsuccessfully pleading Specter’s case.
Some blamed President Obama for being notably absent from Pennsylvania these past weeks. He didn’t fly in to attend a Specter rally or fundraiser, and didn’t pose for photos with his arm around the old boy. Well, maybe the president is a bit gun shy about lending his full endorsement lately, as this has proven to do little for the candidate, but rather tends to rally the Teabaggers and anti-Obama crowd behind whoever is the opponent.
In recent months, Obama's endorsements and campaign appearances weren't enough to save Gov. Corzine's re-election bid in New Jersey, Creigh Deeds' run for governor in Virginia, or Martha Coakley's campaign in Massachusetts for the late Edward Kennedy's Senate seat.
All true, but probably not relevant. It was simply Specter’s time.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
And The “Idiot Of The Week” Award Goes To…
The big brouhaha this week, as if you weren’t already fuming about it, has been the furor over the revelation that Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Ralston was lying through his teeth last month when he told everyone he’d been shot in the shoulder by the all-purpose suspect, a “young black man”.
There was, naturally, a police manhunt through West Philly for a young black man in cornrows wearing a white t-shirt, (imagine the difficulty finding suspects who fit that description), with all the neighborhood inconvenience that goes along with a massive manhunt for a cop shooter. Yellow tape cordoning off streets; swarms of angry, heavily armed officers rooting in alleys and rooftops, helicopters buzzing overhead, and that feeling of dread that seems to fall over the entire community when it happens near your home.
So it was doubly insulting to black Philadelphians when investigators revealed that Ralston, a 46-year old father of five and a 21-year veteran of the force, made the whole thing up, shooting himself in the shoulder with his service pistol. Once again made the scapegoat to cover up white folks’ crimes, the African-American community is righteously angry.
It’s the kind of thing that has people conjuring up images of Susan Smith in South Carolina, Charles Stuart in Boston; and our own Bonnie Sweeten, who just last year claimed to have been kidnapped and stuffed in a car trunk by those same all-purpose black men, while living it up in Disney World on stolen money.
Try as I might, though, I can’t stay angry at Ralston. The man is clearly stupid beyond imagination. Mind-bogglingly, head-swimmingly stupid.
Any 15-year old who watches “CSI” can tell you that gunpowder residue is traceable, and this pitiful hoax wouldn’t fill a one-hour episode.
If his motive was, as police brass speculated, to somehow become famous, he has succeeded. He now enters a sacred realm and breathes the rarified air reserved for those whose idiocy has made them household names. He will forever be the butt of jokes and the shame of his family, and that doesn’t bother me a bit.
What does bother me, though, is that Ralston, who has been suspended with intent to dismiss, faces no further consequences than the loss of his job, pension, and good name.
Police Commissioner Ramsey, while visibly shaken and ashamed of Ralston’s actions, said he wouldn’t be charged, since Ralston had been offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for his full confession.
Sounds reasonable, until you ask yourself if you would get the same deal.
Try misusing the 911 system, falsifying a police report, discharging a firearm, recklessly endangering others, and wasting hundreds of man-hours of taxpayer-funded police resources and watch what happens. You’re going to spend the next couple of years locked in a very small room with a very ugly person, that’s what - shot up shoulder and all. At least Ralston gets to go home to his wife and kids, even if they aren’t speaking to him.
The other reason I found Ralston’s boneheaded plan more amusing than infuriating is that I had just re-listened, via You Tube, to a comedy routine from a few years ago by Paul Mooney.
Mooney, if you’re not familiar with his work, was Richard Pryor’s joke writer and is a very funny brother in his own right, although some black folks I know are turned off by his vulgarity and frequent use of the n-word.
Anyway, in this routine, Mooney announces his new business, 1-900- Blame-a-(N-word), where white folks can call when they’ve committed a crime and need a black person to take the blame. Since they’re going to do it anyway, Mooney jokes, he might as well turn a profit.
It’s a hilarious bit, and like all good comedy, exposes the big picture to closer scrutiny.
White criminals have been using the “random black man defense” to cover their own misdeeds since the first slave ship landed. It’s now become a tired cliché straight out of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, but there’s a reason they still do it. It still works. You can only name the five or six who famously didn’t get away with it – there’s no way to historically measure the number who have.
Robert Ralston didn’t get away with it. He’s unemployable, a world-class schmuck and the laughingstock of an entire city. Plus, for the rest of his life, his shoulder will throb like a toothache every time it rains.
It may not be justice, but at least it’s better than nothing.
There was, naturally, a police manhunt through West Philly for a young black man in cornrows wearing a white t-shirt, (imagine the difficulty finding suspects who fit that description), with all the neighborhood inconvenience that goes along with a massive manhunt for a cop shooter. Yellow tape cordoning off streets; swarms of angry, heavily armed officers rooting in alleys and rooftops, helicopters buzzing overhead, and that feeling of dread that seems to fall over the entire community when it happens near your home.
So it was doubly insulting to black Philadelphians when investigators revealed that Ralston, a 46-year old father of five and a 21-year veteran of the force, made the whole thing up, shooting himself in the shoulder with his service pistol. Once again made the scapegoat to cover up white folks’ crimes, the African-American community is righteously angry.
It’s the kind of thing that has people conjuring up images of Susan Smith in South Carolina, Charles Stuart in Boston; and our own Bonnie Sweeten, who just last year claimed to have been kidnapped and stuffed in a car trunk by those same all-purpose black men, while living it up in Disney World on stolen money.
Try as I might, though, I can’t stay angry at Ralston. The man is clearly stupid beyond imagination. Mind-bogglingly, head-swimmingly stupid.
Any 15-year old who watches “CSI” can tell you that gunpowder residue is traceable, and this pitiful hoax wouldn’t fill a one-hour episode.
If his motive was, as police brass speculated, to somehow become famous, he has succeeded. He now enters a sacred realm and breathes the rarified air reserved for those whose idiocy has made them household names. He will forever be the butt of jokes and the shame of his family, and that doesn’t bother me a bit.
What does bother me, though, is that Ralston, who has been suspended with intent to dismiss, faces no further consequences than the loss of his job, pension, and good name.
Police Commissioner Ramsey, while visibly shaken and ashamed of Ralston’s actions, said he wouldn’t be charged, since Ralston had been offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for his full confession.
Sounds reasonable, until you ask yourself if you would get the same deal.
Try misusing the 911 system, falsifying a police report, discharging a firearm, recklessly endangering others, and wasting hundreds of man-hours of taxpayer-funded police resources and watch what happens. You’re going to spend the next couple of years locked in a very small room with a very ugly person, that’s what - shot up shoulder and all. At least Ralston gets to go home to his wife and kids, even if they aren’t speaking to him.
The other reason I found Ralston’s boneheaded plan more amusing than infuriating is that I had just re-listened, via You Tube, to a comedy routine from a few years ago by Paul Mooney.
Mooney, if you’re not familiar with his work, was Richard Pryor’s joke writer and is a very funny brother in his own right, although some black folks I know are turned off by his vulgarity and frequent use of the n-word.
Anyway, in this routine, Mooney announces his new business, 1-900- Blame-a-(N-word), where white folks can call when they’ve committed a crime and need a black person to take the blame. Since they’re going to do it anyway, Mooney jokes, he might as well turn a profit.
It’s a hilarious bit, and like all good comedy, exposes the big picture to closer scrutiny.
White criminals have been using the “random black man defense” to cover their own misdeeds since the first slave ship landed. It’s now become a tired cliché straight out of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, but there’s a reason they still do it. It still works. You can only name the five or six who famously didn’t get away with it – there’s no way to historically measure the number who have.
Robert Ralston didn’t get away with it. He’s unemployable, a world-class schmuck and the laughingstock of an entire city. Plus, for the rest of his life, his shoulder will throb like a toothache every time it rains.
It may not be justice, but at least it’s better than nothing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)